


C://PERSONA

by sxetia



Category: Persona Series, Shin Megami Tensei Series, Shin Megami Tensei: Devil Summoner
Genre: Cyberpunk, Gen, Nonbinary Character, Original Character(s), Original Character(s) within Canon Setting, Original Fiction, Original setting, Other, Science Fiction, Science Fiction & Fantasy, Trans Character, Virtual Reality
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-01-15
Updated: 2020-09-11
Packaged: 2021-02-27 05:47:22
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 8
Words: 51,520
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22262062
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sxetia/pseuds/sxetia
Summary: For every new way that our souls connect, a new means to tear us apart is spawned. When strange phenomena wreak havoc upon a virtual utopia, a mystery begins to unfold that bridges the gap between perception and self...You are the Crow. With the online world of the Chrysalis before you, you alone trek into the abyss in search of answers.(Original story/setting taking place within the Megami Tensei universe; incorporates elements of Devil Summoner, Persona and Shin Megami Tensei against a cyberpunk backdrop.)
Comments: 3
Kudos: 17





	1. prologue

**Author's Note:**

> _C://PERSONA_ is a long-form original story within the greater Megami Tensei universe. In spite of the name, it takes influence from titles such as Devil Summoner, Digital Devil Saga and Shin Megami Tensei as well as the titular Persona subseries. Fusing the elements of the Megaten entries that we know and love with a contemporary cyberpunk backdrop, the purpose of this story is to create a transformative work with the material these games provide that explores subject matter relevant to the growing influence of the online world — and how it's become one in the same with our "real" world.
> 
> This has been a passion project that I've been workshopping for the better part of a year, so I'm _beyond_ excited to put it to paper and share it. This started work as a game, but I later moved it to a work of fiction as I felt that it would better fit the story I was attempting to tell. Special thanks to Latin, Arden, Bella and June for proofreading and reviewing the early chapters for me when I was in the editing stages!
> 
> I do hope you enjoy. ♥

_“Existence is not a choice offered upon conception, but a trial that all must undergo regardless of how willing they may be._

_Some soar through life with grace, whilst others view the burden of existence too great to bear alone._

_Some rely upon others to help carry this weight, forming a web of bonds so strong that they break under no pressure, a safety net above the abyss._

_Some recede inward and hide away from the world, finding safety in isolation as their cocoon protects them until they are ready to spread their wings._

_Others don_ **masks** _of determination to face life’s hardships, hiding away fear in favor of facing their fate.”_


	2. 0: offline

I like the city at night. 

People are the most true to themselves under cover of dark; protected by the shame of prying eyes when lurking in the shadows. The most vulnerable details and the things that people hold dearest are usually the aspects that they keep a secret, kept close and known to nobody but themselves. 

At least, that’s my experience. 

I like to think you can say the same about the place where I live. There’s something close to an odd sense intimacy in the colors a city shows after dark: the embrace of the frigid cold, the way that the buildings light up and the gigantic screens atop skyscrapers show their brilliance, the lawless hedonism adopted by the people who live there after the sun goes down. 

It’s all... inspiring. It’s the best gift that this city can offer me, and it makes my existence feel a little less lonely. 

Maybe that’s why I go out at night so often. 

It’s not a great city; run-down and bloated from the past twenty-odd years’ technological advancements and the corruption of soul and society it brings. The infrastructure is starting to show its age: dated architecture struggles to keep up with the invasive presence of wires and angular metal shapes grafted into the concrete, the skeletal remnants of years past struggling to sculpt themselves into an ever-changing ideal. It’s like the pride of the people who live here faded away with time, hoping that they could rely on a unified world beyond reality to compensate for the deterioration of their environment. 

I can’t say too much about the people, though. Not a fan of others’ company, so I try to keep to myself. It’s why I like it here after sunset: when the concrete jungle wraps around me like a cocoon and the glow of the city lights envelop me, the city is the closest thing I’ve got to a real friend. My eyes will lilt upwards to watch the skies and I find some sort of comfort in the stars above. 

I can’t see the stars tonight. The screens and skyscrapers pollute the air with enough light to render them invisible. It makes me scowl and tilt my head down to stare at the grimy streets below, tracing the silhouettes of pedestrians passing under me. I wonder if any of them see me: some creep crouched on the old overpass, watching them like I’m about to leap down and ambush them from above. 

Bits and pieces of their conversations reach my ears, carried by the reverberating echo of the alleyway. “...yeah, you heard about that, right...? ...dead in his bedroom, still jacked in... fourth person who died using that stupid rig...”

I sigh and it comes out as fog. I didn’t hear that they found another corpse, but I guess that’s what I get for spending so long not being jacked in. You miss out on things when you’re offline. Tonight was supposed to be a night where I tried to wean myself off of the Uplink, to see if there was anything or any _one_ in this city I was better off devoting my time to, but... wandering the streets and trying to reach out always ended up feeling like I was shoving my nose where it didn’t belong. I always end back up here on the bridge. 

There’s nothing for me here — just me and the city. 

That’s enough navelgazing for one night. I swivel around and plant my feet on the cobblestone streets of the bridge, pushing myself off to begin ambling down the road. I know this path like the back of my hand by this point, but there are always little variances or changes that make each walk back different. The people I see, the things they’re doing. The colors of the neon signs and what they say, the advertisements and programs being played on the screens mounted to the tops of the buildings. 

This time I see a couple having an argument on a street corner, something about privacy. There’s a disheveled looking fellow tucked between two buildings that I pass by, slouched over in a haze with an Uplink attached to his head and his jaw slack. I wonder if he has a home to return to, but I guess that it doesn’t matter much when your prerogative is being jacked in. There’s a news report on the recent deaths the guys from earlier were talking about on one screen, and the other blasts some Chrysalis celebrity playfully twirling a braid and monologuing to the camera with a fake-looking smile. 

The world moves on around me, unconcerned. It’s almost comforting to feel so minuscule. 

It’s a few minutes before I make it back to my apartment building — painted a garish, ugly orange against the shades of gray and black that most of the buildings around it wear. Shorter and stouter than most, so it’s easier to spot. As I push the door open and make my way through the lobby, the receptionist glances up from his computer monitor and cracks a half-amused grin. “Night walk again, eh...?” 

He says my name — the name I was given, not the one I chose for myself — and it burns in my ears. A chuckle fills in the silence created by my lack of reply. He’s laughing _at_ me and not _with_ me. 

Through the lobby, up the stairs, down an empty hall. Apartment #228. My haunt.

* * *

I feel a compulsion to look in the mirror every time I pass by it, even though I know I’m not going to like what I see. I **hate** the way I look. My malign for my facial features grows stronger with each passing second, something new to dislike cropping up in my cognition at random. My face is too round and soft looking, my eyes are way too big and doe-like and have dark circles underneath. Too many hours on the Chrysalis instead of sleeping, but it’s not like I’m going to stop. My hair is fine and soft, coming down in sharp little layers of black that only serve to accentuate how feminine and lithe my face is. It’s a wonder my face isn’t wrinkled to hell and back by how often I spend frowning. 

My brow furrows, but my face still isn’t as strong looking or intense as I want it to be. I hate it. Again. I finally manage to unglue my eyes from the mirror and walk out of my restroom, hanging my old jacket on the doorknob on the way out.

The old apartment is the same stale environment as always — I’m very familiar with most of its “quirks” by now. There are paint stains spattered irregularly on the walls and floors, and unoccupied furniture sits gathering dust in my living room. None of it really gets much use anymore; I spend most of my time either working or jacked into the Chrysalis. There are piles of papers, old books and unfinished projects of mine piled on one of the countertops, and I can’t go five feet without running into a pen, brush, pencil, or some other implement. I try to keep the place neat as can be (nobody sees any of it but me, yet I try to maintain the pretense of civility anyways), but I guess my work escapes me and manages to ooze out of the seams. I stand and linger in the room to take it all in, just observing my home as if I’m paranoid something has changed. Eventually I’m satisfied by the ennui of familiarity and turn down the hallway to head towards my bedroom. 

This is where I spend most of my time. My messy, unmade bed rests in the corner and the Uplink sits on my desk beside it, the perpheral’s face-shaped exterior staring back at me expectantly. It’s all hooked up to my computer, whose gigantic CRT monitor rests neatly upon a tower resting on its side. 

I maneuver over to the desk and pull back my chair, resting a knee on it as I lean forward to place fingers on my keyboard. The blinking green cursor expectantly waits for my input, and soon fizzy letters appear with every depression of the keys. _Clack, clack, clack, clack._ One command at a time, I go through the daily motions: check my EMail. Nothing but old work mail and spam. Check the usual chat rooms I’ve historically always lurked in — just mindless drivel, since they’ve been pretty dead for the past while. Ever since the Uplink changed the way people interact on the Net, most everyone nerdy enough to be clued into online cultures finds a keyboard and an analog monitor too cumbersome and dull compared to being jacked in.

The majority of the folks who still hang out in the chat rooms or message boards are too contrarian to use the Chrysalis, have some moral obligation not to use it, or just flat out can’t afford it. I can’t help but feel like they’ll be left behind soon, the rate at which things are evolving. 

I don’t have any direct IMs. The message boards have nothing worth reading — I can’t even remember the last time I posted on one of them. Each time I did it would get swept up and lost in the constant exchange of information and ideas, my own attempts at contribution just a drop in the expanse. 

For some reason I can’t help but frown. It’s not like I expected anything different, but I guess I’m a little wary of burning way too many hours jacked in. It would have been nice to have a distraction or a reason to pull myself away from it for a little longer, but I guess it’ll be fine. 

The Uplink’s facade-like shape burns a hole in the corner of my peripherals, and I can’t ignore it any longer. 

I reach over to pick it up by its “chin” and hold it up in the air, regarding it with an empty affront of speculation. They came about quietly a few months ago now, probably sometime in September or October. I can’t remember exactly when, just that it creeped up out of nowhere. The Uplink seemed like the sort of thing a huge corporation would come up with and advertise to hell and back; spam mail, massive advertisements on building-mounted screens, holographic models shilling it in department stores. Instead it mostly spread through word of mouth, the creator (a programmer and tinkerer known only by their handle “Loren”, also serving as the Chrysalis’s systems administrator and host) having quietly made a handful of posts on forums they frequented to pitch the idea and try and make a few sales. 

A few people were optimistic enough to buy one, even as far-fetched as the idea of the Chrysalis seemed — another reality hosted entirely on the Net, one that you could link your mind to and interface with as if it were reality? It had to have been way too good to be true, but somehow it was the real deal. Word spread quickly, and eventually you had a few thousand people jacked in any given day. Then a few tens of thousands, then a few hundred thousand, then… 

It seemed perfect, to me. Another world away from all of this. It wouldn’t solve all of my issues with the physical world — and _didn’t_ solve them — but it was someplace else.

Come to think of it, I don’t even think of it as an escape anymore. It’s… more just my default state of being. I’ve come to think of working and maneuvering around in real life as the uncomfortable, begrudging in-betweens of the time I spend jacked in, burning daylight until I can finally disappear into the expanse.

I don’t know how to feel about that, so I push the thought back any time it rears its head. 

* * *

The Uplink looks vaguely like a featureless theater mask, or a facial prosthetic or something. It’s formed of stiff gray plastic with nylon straps to secure the thing to your head. There are adjustable sensors that are supposed to line up with your temples, and I think those are meant to pick up your brain waves or something to detect input from your mind. I’m honestly kind of foggy on the technical specifics, but it’s pretty high-level stuff. A broad, flat cable runs from the bottom of the chin piece and connects to your computer; though I don’t think that the PC really does much of the work on the computational side of things and is meant more to act as a conduit to connect to the Net. (My rig sure as hell isn’t powerful enough to natively run something like this on its hardware.) 

I spend way too long looking at it, zoning out as I run through the details of it all in my head. Procrastinating again. My free hand maneuvers back to my keyboard and I key in a few commands. 

_> dir S://_

_Directory set to S://._

_> run chrysalis.bat_

_Initializing…_

_C H R Y S A L I S v1.1_

The text scrolls up automatically before I’m presented with a familiar prompt.

_Please enter username and password._

There’s a feeling of restrained euphoria as I key in the first variable. 

_USERNAME: Crow_

Crow. That’s my name. It’s my name on the only place where it matters, anyway.

I don’t hate my given name or anything, but it feels _dirty_ to hear it on the lips of people that don’t even _know_ me. There’s so much intimacy in a name, an identity, and picking something simple and assumed acts as a safety barrier between myself and the strangers that surround me. I’m not anybody on the Chrysalis — I’m Crow. That’s all they need to know, and that’s all they’re going to get out of me. 

Just how I like it. 

I enter my password and wait for the connection to finalize, stepping forward to sit back on my bed and settle in. 

_Ready. Please initialize Uplink connection._

I assume the routine of strapping the Uplink to my head and lay down, resting my head on my pillow and staring up at a blank screen. The process of jacking in is always a little freaky: you slowly lose control of your limbs as the Uplink assumes agency over your thoughts, redirecting them to inputs to control your avatar as if it were really your body. Feelings and sensations wash away only to be replaced by the virtual world affecting you — like you’re really transported someplace else. There’s some controversy over the danger of letting something like this screw with your brain waves and paralyze you like it does, and it’s all wholly justified considering the recent string of deaths from people using these things. 

But it doesn’t matter to me. This is where I feel the least uncomfortable, so the risk is worth it. 

I open my eyes and watch corridors of cobalt steel materialize around me, the familiar world of the Chrysalis slowly becoming corporeal before my very eyes. I glance down and look at my hands, wiggling my fingers and balling them into fists to ensure I still have a degree of motor functions. All good. 

I reach up to grab the brim of my cap and tug it down firmly over my head, further obscuring my face as I tilt my head downwards. I start walking down the hallway, eyes on the welcome zone’s exit.

I’m home.


	3. i: chrysalis

There’s such a disconnect in being disconnected. 

When I’m not jacked in everything feels _different,_ little inconsistencies and imperfections that don’t exist on the Chrysalis. It’s always the tiniest things that you don’t think about at all until they creep right up on you at once. It’s the most inane things: the taste of the air, the way your tongue sits in your mouth, dry skin on your lips, the humidity clinging to your flesh and the way that the temperature seeps right through you and into your bones. You don’t have to worry about any of that whenever you’re jacked in — the Uplink automates everything and makes sure that your nerves don’t have to care about anything more than breathing. 

The experience and synchronization between body and mind is… perfect, in a way. You don’t really _feel_ a lot when you’re jacked in. I guess they haven’t perfected the emulation of nerve signals or whatever it might be, but there’s something nice about having all that worry taken away for a little while.

All of these thoughts hit me in an instant as I maneuver down the hallway, a hand raised to let my finger gingerly graze against the cold metallic surface of the wall. I can register the temperature and the hard feel of the metal, but it doesn’t quite feel the same as it would if I were offline. It’s not the same — but that isn’t a bad thing, I guess. It’s just a part of the experience, part of what makes being jacked in worth it.

I still don’t know if the environment on the Chrysalis has been pre-determined by the person (people?) who runs it or if it’s user-generated. My immediate hunch is that it’s a combination of both, but I wouldn’t even know where the line between “official” and “unofficial” is drawn or how you’d go about adding to the environment here. A lot of the stuff you see in this place, as far as environments go, is a little too off-the-wall to seem “professional” or maintain any semblance of a good first impression. At the same time it’s hard to imagine somebody on here would look at some of this shit and be satisfied with their creations.

Case in point — the welcome area. A lot of people colliqually call it the “train station” because of how it’s laid out — a long, narrow room that you find yourself in upon a successful login, leading to a wide, mostly-empty room vaguely reminiscent of a railway station’s central terminal. Every bit of the place, walls floors and all, are made to look (and feel) like an odd, off-blue metal. The ceiling of this central room expands upward into a polygonal swirl until it all squelches together at the ceiling in an awkard shape, like it was supposed to spiral out but got congested at the peak of it all. It’s the little imperfections like that, or the way the statue-like structure in the center of the room seems to lack any sort of rhyme or reason to its blocky form — just squares of metal stacked atop one another into an amorphous mess that only serves to accentuate this place’s _strange_ sense of aesthetic.

Nobody else in the terminal seems to pay the markable _weirdness_ of it all any mind. Not any of the dozens, hundreds of people filtering in and out of the entrances and exits, or those hanging around and congregating in the crowded space to gregariously revel in the atmosphere of a crowded, buzzing area. They sit up on the statue and hang off of it like it’s a playground, getting caught in idle chatter and riding the high of one another’s company. 

I start to walk by them towards the exit, and one of them seems to recognize me — I’m not familiar with him, but me not knowing somebody isn’t exactly _remarkable._ He’s as faceless as anybody else in this crowd, and his appearance doesn’t particularly stick out: brown hair styled in prominent spikes, an over-styled red jacket with all matter of zippers and white pinstripes. His facial features are beady and squinty, almost like a rat. 

“Hey, it’s the _Crow!_ Look, I _told_ you he was gonna come back.”

I make a face at the way he talks about me. Why the hell would he pay attention to me, of all people?

One of his friends — a short, darker-complexioned fellow with round cheeks and a pair of squared-off sunglasses over his eyes — makes a confused face. “Yeah, and? We weren’t doubting you, man, they _always_ come back on.”

It’s as if I’m not standing there at all. I guess I’m used to it.

The spiky-haired guy shakes his head and releases an audible groan, leaning on one elbow and propping his head up with his hand. “Whatever, whatever. Where’d ya go, huh? Must have been something important to get _you_ to get your ass up for once.”

I just stare at him. The longer I maintain my silence, the more uncomfortable he grows, and his friends slowly begin to release nervous laughter. I turn on my boot’s heel to walk away, and he stammers as I do so. “W-wait, man, I’m sorry if I made ya mad, u-uhh… any way I can make it up to you?”

I don’t know why he cares so much. I’m just some person. My annoyance isn’t any more consequential than anything else he’ll experience tonight, or in the rest of his life.

I turn my head and look at him for a moment, shrugging my shoulders. “Not interested,” I state curtly and firmly — not with any malice, just frankness. With that I’m off again. I can hear their laughter pick back up again as their conversation begins to pick up traction. They’re talking about how much of a miracle it is that the man in red got me to _talk._

* * *

There are several doors all lined up on the wall, most of them infested with crowds pulling in and out of them. Too many people — bodies collide in the Chrysalis just like they would offline. Still not sure if it’s a bug or a feature, but it means that the entrances and exits to the Terminal are always utterly congested. I manage to set my eyes on one that’s relatively uncrowded, metal door gaping open and slamming shut as the flow of people intensifies and lessens. The door slides open again as I approach, split diagonally and disappearing into the floor and ceiling. The doors are another one of those subtle oddities that make me question who designed this place or how the hell it came about. I don’t question it too hard, but I’ve got a natural affinity for aesthetics and I can’t help but fixate on it as I walk out of the Terminal and onto its front steps. 

The underside of the metallic awning is mirrored, providing a crystal-clear look at the people who stand below it. Actually, it could be a mirror, or it could be a video screen of some sort, or just a render of what’s below it. It’s hard to tell — the irregular nature of the way the Chrysalis’s structures are rendered means that it could be pretty much anything. It’s a little too clear to seem like a projection or video feed, but a bit too cloudy to seem like a mirror. Thinking about it too hard makes my head hurt, but I stare up at my own reflection anyways. Again with the mirrors, but unlike when I’m offline I actually halfway _like_ looking up at myself in the mirror. When you’re jacked in, the Uplink tends to default to your mind’s own perception of yourself to render your avatar, and most people tend to not really look _exactly_ like they do naturally. If you’re smart about it you can begin to mold your appearance to your liking, just by beginning to naturally imagine yourself in a certain way. A pretty easy task if you’re anywhere near competent enough to _belong_ on the Chrysalis, as forcing a dissociation between mind and body is one of the key tenants to really thriving on here.  
As you can probably guess by now, I’ve gotten really good at not thinking of my body as my own, so I’ve gotten pretty good at modifying my appearance on here. It feels more comfortable, more familiar — more like _me._

I look a little stronger and proud all around — I’m a few inches taller and my facial features are more sharply defined, and my stature is heavier and more strong-looking. My hair is colored in bright shades of white and gray and elegantly meets my shoulders in long, wavy strands, though it’s mostly tucked away beneath the black cap I wear. The cap also serves the dual purpose of distracting from my eyes; I never managed to get rid of the softness in my gaze, no matter how much I focus on making my eyes intense or sharp they always look too big and sad. I do what I can to distract from it — lining my eyes with dark makeup, hiding them below the brim of my hat, or bringing more attention to the rest of my face by coloring in my upper lip with a black fill.

Black — you’re starting to see a pattern there, right? All my clothes here are the same color, from my hat to my boots. My jacket’s zipper crosses my chest and leaves one part hanging off my waist asymmetrically, exposing the gleam of metal off my belt and the undershirt tucked into it. I’m a little proud of my sense of fashion, I guess — not confident enough to pull this sort of thing off when not jacked in. 

The details I’m most fond of are my wings — painted in white and outlined with an echo of gray on the back of my jacket, the lone variance and markable detail on my person. They come from my namesake. I guess I feel a kindredness with crows and an understanding in what a lot of people associate them with.

I stare at myself for five minutes or so. God, I’m such a narcissist.

* * *

When I break myself from my trance I hobble down the steps, boots marking down on metallic streets. Three different directions as paved by winding roads, branching off into the expanse as they move in a wide variety of different directions. It’s as much of a reality as the corporeal world that our bodies lie in. People make their homes here, find lives here, find reasons to keep coming back here instead of roughing it offline. I find something alluring in that, the same kind of _inspiration_ I get from the nighttime city. The Chrysalis is vast and infinite, limited only by the time I have to surrender to it. But I’m just an observer — an outsider who immerses themselves in the artificial nightlife from afar.

If I found a place where I felt compelled to step in and integrate myself I don’t know if I’d humor that compulsion. I’m kind of used to my own company.

I turn to walk down the left-hand path, pretty much choosing it on a whim. It doesn’t take long before the street begins to fork off into three different paths that rise and fall in different directions — one straight ahead but moving upwards, one twisting downwards and to the right, one that makes a sharp left but remains totally level. They intertwine and overlap kind of like highway overpasses, only sized small enough to act as pedestrian walkways. The people who walk down them usually go in pairs, or trios, sometimes larger groups. They all walk with purpose and direction that I can’t help but be a little envious of. 

I meander over to where the paths begin to fork off into individual bridges and place my hand on the barrier, leaning over to gaze off into the expanse of the Chrysalis. In the nooks-and-crannies between the towering shapes that act as the virtual metropolis’s skyscrapers, I can spot tiny visages of the silhouettes of the Chrysalis’ staggering infinity. Abstract structures formed of clumped copper and iron act as brush strokes on the vast canvas of this new reality, too high to see the top of and too numbered to see any end to. If I look at it the right way the buildings almost seem to form cohesive, deliberate shapes, a methodical madness and a single square foot on a massive mural. As far as I can tell, the “city” never ends. Even past where my eyes can make out any definitive details, I can still see the bright glimmer of the buildings’ lights breaking through and peppering the air.

It’s almost like the stars in the night sky. It might be a pale imitation, but it’s the closest thing I’m going to get, especially here. It’s almost as beautiful.

I pull myself away and look back at the three forking paths. Eenie-meenie-miney-moe — going up.

I can’t remember whether or not I’ve followed this path before, but I guess if I’ve forgotten then it’s basically the same thing as a new experience. My doubts are erased as soon as I make it to the top of the arch and find where the path flattens out, because I definitely don’t recognize the building I’m headed towards. It’s a magnitude larger in terms of length and width, but just seems to sort of _stop_ prematurely rather than rising up infinitely like the other buildings. The base of the structure is settled on four thick stilts that fall down into the endlessness below, eventually dissipating into the fog.

I’ve never seen anything like this in the Chrysalis before, and that’s exactly why I pick up the pace and begin to walk more quickly towards it. Whatever it is, it’s _interesting._

* * *

Sooner or later I’m making my way through the massive entrance (really just a hole in the side of a building, as there’s no door to speak of) and attempting to get a feeling for the place. There’s nowhere near as many people here as there normally are inside buildings in the Chrysalis — even the less popular ones feel a little more occupied than this place, which feels like a complete ghost town. To both sides the hallways expand in what looks like a vaguely circular shape, and there’s a doorway in front of me with a staircase heading down into the huge central chamber.

As I pass down towards the staircase, it becomes immediately clear why there aren’t very many people hanging around this part of town: it’s a stadium. A _sports_ stadium, no less. At least, it looks like one, and it’s definitely being used as one — though it’s more like a practice field now, the seats barely filled. I can see people gathered on what amounts as the field, kicking a ball across a reflective chrome surface. Soccer, maybe? I honestly don’t know — the sorts of people who congregate online aren’t _usually_ the most sports savvy, so it’s no wonder that there’s so little interest in this place.

Still, it’s _interesting_ that this sort of place is in the Chrysalis at all. It only raises more questions for me as to how the hell the structures in this place are made. 

There are probably a dozen people in total on the field, loosely organized into teams without seeming to have much in the way of formal organization. No jerseys or anything like that. Concave masses of metal on either side of the field look like they act as goals, as their ball constantly skitters towards and away from them. There are a few people standing, sitting, crouching at the side of the field to get an up-close-and-personal look at the players on the field. I figure I might as well join them rather than try and make things out from afar, so eventually I head down the steps and park myself roughly adjacent to a small group observing the game from the corner.

One of them looks over at me — he’s an older-looking guy, slender with hair slicked back in streaks of gradient black-and-gray. He’s wearing a slick-looking black suit, button-down shirt half-done to expose his tattooed chest. 

A wry grin crosses his features as his head tilts towards me, and he chuckles with a voice that sounds like gravel and smoke. “Funny, ain’t it? All the shit you could do in this place and you have people who just want to pretend to play sports.” 

I look his way and study him for a moment, hands settling into my pockets. “I was thinking the same thing. It’s about the last thing I’d expect to see around here. Makes me wonder how a stadium even cropped up — couldn’t have been something the admins accounted for when designing this place.”

He shrugs and assumes a lackadaisical expression as he speaks. “If the people want it it’ll show up sooner or later.”

I chew on the thought for a moment and don’t reply, but the man drags me back into conversation, head tilting to the side as he juts a bony finger towards one of the athletes. “Man, look at _that_ beauty. She could kick my ass ten ways to Tuesday and I’d let her. Check out those _legs…_ ”

I frown, but I can’t help but let my eyes guide towards the athlete he’s regarding. Her avatar is _striking,_ to say the least: she’s tall, muscle definition drawing lines from underneath sienna skin. Her hair is cropped short and swept back so that it points upwards, colored in brilliant, burning shades of scarlet and salmon. It seems like her clothes pay more mind to function rather than fashion, but they’ve got a certain flair: knee-length bottoms made of dark skin-hugging fabric, and a similarly-tight top in a dark green with a black stripe running down the center and circling around her collar.

I admit that I can’t keep my eyes off of her, but it’s less the way she looks and how she moves, how she carries herself. Every step she takes on the field is full of pep and energy, and there’s a wild grin on her face that compounds with a chipper, nasal voice as she barks out at her teammates. She’s a show-off — always spinning and dramatically bounding from one foot onto the other. She’ll even accentuate her kicks by flipping backwards and landing on her extended foot, or cartwheeling in between plays just to keep her blood pumping. It’s captivating — _she’s_ captivating. Her movements are so fluid and full of finesse, like she was placed there by an animator breathing life into her with every frame. 

I hear that God damn laugh again. It’s the older guy, gawking right at me with that smug grin plastered on thin, chapped lips. He’s apparently caught wind of how stricken I am with this girl. “Man, you’re head-over-heels, jeez. Or maybe you’re just thinkin’ about how bad you’d like to take _her_ home. You know she doesn’t really look like that, right?” 

That reality sends a burning feeling down my spine. I’m lucidly aware of the fact that practically nobody on here looks like their avatar — including and **especially** myself — but sometimes it’s nice to just pretend. I assume a scowl and shake my head.

“No, not—… not really… I don’t really have much interest in that sort of thing.” I mean it when I say it, but he clearly doesn’t believe me, and I feel an odd urge to explain myself.

“I just—… I’m just studious, I guess.” 

My hands flay out in desperate claws in front of me as I lock my eyes back on her. She’s diving towards the ball now, where it bounces off her gut and into the legspan of a teammate. She lets out a joyous chuckle as she watches the ball flutter away, kicking herself back up onto her feet and giving chase. 

I try again. “The way she moves, how she carries herself—… I wish I could put it to paper here…”

The more I go on the more he just laughs, and rather than sink deeper into frustration I opt to recede inwards again. Another attempt at voicing my thoughts gone wrong, but it’s no big deal — all the same as it always was. I crouch down into a squat and bring a hand to my chin, index finger curled over my mouth in an attempt to hone my focus. I figure that making myself small will communicate that I want the guy to leave me alone. 

He says something to me, goading me on further, but I don’t hear a word he says. I’m blocking him out and focusing specifically on the things that brought me here. It’s fascinating to me how cultures and communities crop up in online spaces, particularly the more peculiar and unorthodox ones (like people who blow all this money on an Uplink and a rig to connect it to just to play soccer, rather than spending a few bucks on an actual soccer ball or something). My mind begins to wander as my eyes settle into the fluid motions of the game, and specifically _that girl._ The players move with all the fluidity of watercolors but scatter like papers in the wind, and she skips along the field as if she were a pebble upon still waters. When she kicks it’s thunder and her helps of self-righteous pride are lightning. 

The guy says something again, more insistent. I just frown and bring my fist closer to my jaw, annoyed that my focus is broken.

I look over at him for a second, giving him a disapproving glare, and then I turn back to face the field. 

There is a ball headed straight for my face.

* * *

As soon as it makes impact I’m immediately knocked out of my crouch and onto my back, the sudden blunt force leaving me dazed and confused. Dizziness is pretty normal when using the Uplink, so I’m not too concerned with that.

What worries me is the _pain._

There’s a dull ache from the base of my forehead to the tip of my jaw, and my nose burns from being mushed in. The inside of my lips sting from being knocked straight into the sharp side of my teeth. 

I’ve never felt pain when using the Uplink before, save for the usual headaches. I didn’t even know that it was possible for stimuli from the Chrysalis to elicit pain of any sort, though I guess it makes sense. It feels as real as any pain that I’ve ever felt when offline, which leaves me begging the question: _why_ is that sensation programmed into the Chrysalis? It seems like there’d be no real reason for it to be necessary. 

As I stare upwards at the open ceiling, slackjawed and speechless, the older guy stands over me laughing at my misery. “I **told** you to watch it, dumbass! You were too busy eyefuckin’ miss all-star to pay attention, and now look at ya’.” 

All I can muster is a low, rumbling groan from inside my chest, and I slowly bring myself to stand upright. My blurred vision begins to register a shape bounding towards me, and a voice drawing near. 

“Omigodomigodomigodomigodomi **GAWD!** ” 

It’s the girl. Her voice is a lot more high-pitched and feminine than her cries would lead me to expect, and now that she’s closer I can get a better look at her facial features. Strong as I’d expect, with a prominent brow and pointed chin. 

Her eyes look bizarrely tired, almost bagged, but maybe that’s just how everybody looks here. Regular Uplink usage isn’t exactly healthy.

“Are you okay!? I am **so** sorry, oh my **gawd,** ” she cries out as she leans forward to plant both her hands on her knees, fretting over me with a horrified look on her face.

It feels awkward to have somebody paying such genuine attention to me. 

I nod my head and release another grunt, placing a hand on my head to tame the ache. I’m aware now of the fact that the impact knocked my hat off my head, so I turn around and grab it from behind me. When I put it back on I grip the brim and tug it down to further obscure my features. “Yeah, I’m fine. That just— uhh… that hurt.” 

“Yeah, it looks like it,” she concurs, before making a confused face. “Uh… hey, your face…” 

The older guy quirks a brow as he seems to catch onto what she’s referring to. He whistles and sticks his hands in the pockets of his slacks, leaning back exaggeratedly to show faux impression. “Man, I **told you** she could kick our asses.”

She shoots him a confused look while I bring my hand above my lip, investigating an odd itch. I rub my fingers there for a minute and draw my hand back, and whenever I look down at it my fingertips are stained with crimson. 

“I’m… _bleeding?_ ”

The girl is every bit as flabbergasted as I am, while the guy just looks amused. “Yeah, from your nose… I guess my ball hit you pretty hard, huh?” She makes a sympathetic pouty face as she digs her her fingers into her hips, but I’m too caught up in the sight of my own blood (virtual as it may be) on my hands. Pain made sense, even if it was unprecedented: if the Uplink can emulate touch, it can emulate pain. But there’s no good reason for blood. 

I wipe away a few more drops and glance back up at the girl. “I’ve never seen anybody bleed on here before, have you?”

She shakes her head. “Nuh-uh. Nobody on here really gets into fights or anything, and I’ve never hit anybody with a ball before.” 

The guy just keeps laughing. I wonder when he’s going to go away.

“Yeah, that was my bad,” I admit. “Should have been more careful. Just— it’s just weird that you can bleed on here. That doesn’t feel right.” 

She plants a hand out in front of me, and I stare at it for a few seconds before I realize she wants me to take it. I reach out only to brush it aside with the back of my hand, planting that same hand onto the floor to push myself up. The girl looks a little hurt for a moment or two, but she quickly brushes it off in favor of burrowing further into her apologetic efforts. I think she thinks I’m mad.

“I—… I can make it up to you!”

I shake my head and peer at her out of the corner of my eye, wiping the blood on my face off on my sleeve. Honestly, I’m still too preoccupied with the blood to be too concerned with her attempts at making amends. “It’s fine, don’t… don’t worry about it. I don’t really know how you’d make it up to me, anyways.” 

“How about you hit me back? C’mere, right in my face.” She taps her own face right under the eye. 

All I can do in response to that is just stare. She stays frozen there for a few moments before it becomes apparent that I’m not going to take her up on her offer. “You’ve gotta let me do _something._ ” 

The longer this goes on the more uncomfortable I feel. The guy back at the terminal, the older dude who’s still watching our conversation unfold, this girl — too many eyes on me. I don’t really know how to deal with it. 

“How’d you even get a ball, anyways?” That’s my best effort to defuse and divert the conversation, gesturing to the ball that her teammates have long since reclaimed in her absence. “I’ve never seen accessories freely detach from your avatar like that.” Given enough time, my hat would have eventually rematerialized on my head if it stayed gone after she knocked it off. 

...I think. I’m honestly not sure. 

The girl lights up, and a wide grin crosses her face. “It’s not a part of my avatar! There’s this girl on here who can apparently take the game’s data and hack it into other stuff. It’s pretty cool!” 

Even the older guy is shocked by that, evidenced by his arched brow and how he suddenly interjects. “...Hacking?” 

The girl nods. “Yeah! She can apparently, like… take parts of the Chrysalis’s world and re-do its code to make it into other stuff. I dunno the specifics of it, honestly — not my realm of expertise. But apparently everything in the game world’s made up of this stuff called Magnetite, and if you bring some to her she can make it into new stuff.” 

I don’t buy it, but I don’t know enough about the technical aspects of this place to debate it. I’m not a programmer or anything, and hardly anyone knows anything about Loren or their development process. 

“...Magnetite,” the guy says with a troubled look. “Sounds interesting.” He hasn’t been that focused up until this moment, and it’s odd to see. “Real interesting.” 

I look between the two for a second. My face still hurts, and I probably need to get to sleep soon. I’m used to getting the bare minimum of sleep that my working hours necessitate, but even now my mind is beginning to have trouble keeping up with everything. Maybe being hit in the face had something to do with it. 

With a thought, a holographic menu appears in front of me and hovers motionless just within arms’ length. It’s how most of the utilities on the Chrysalis are handled in lieu of a keyboard with which to enter commands — the standard fare. Mail, contact list, the log off command, personal account management, that sort of thing. My hand begins to gravitate towards the logout option, but apparently the girl’s eyes are too quick for me to evade her. “Wait!” 

For some reason I humor her, finger outstretched and inches away from my escape. She makes that pouty face again, and I can only counter it with a frustrated expression. 

“At least lemme add you to my contacts so we can catch up whenever I figure out how I’m gonna make it up to you.”

“...not interested. Seriously, it—... isn’t that big of a deal…” 

“What’s your username?” It doesn’t seem like she plans on taking no for an answer. I sigh and grip the brim of my cap. 

“It’s Crow.” 

She makes a victorious noise and opens her own menu, poking her address book and keying in my name with the keyboard that appears after. Moments later my menu flickers to let me know I’ve received mail, and sure enough it’s a contact request. 

_Ace has added you to her address book. Add her to yours?_

I mull it over for a moment. She’s looking at me expectantly, so I select “yes.” 

“Awesome!” Ace cries out, pumping her fists and hopping in place. “I’ll get back to you later. I _mean_ it!” 

I’m too busy contemplating the notion that I now have a single contact in my address book to reply, half-amused by the change of pace.

The older man clears his throat, back into character as a smooth-talking wise-guy. “How about I get _your_ add, huh, little lady?” 

...I feel the need to clarify that she’s taller than he is by an inch or so. She’s almost taller than me. 

Ace makes a face like she just smelled something bad. While the two of them get into it, I drag my finger over the logout command and enter it.

* * *

It’s always kind of a surreal experience to watch somebody log out. They’re there one second and gone the next — blink and you’ll miss it. I can’t help but wonder whether or not Ace and her boy-toy managed to catch it, or if I just up and disappeared while they were looking away.

There’s always a moment of darkness when logging off, locked into your own body as the Uplink de-initializes and gives you back your motor functions. Nothing but the darkness and your thoughts, nerves settling back to sensation and muscles tensing back up as you slowly regain your ability to move. Sometimes, in those few seconds where I lay there trapped between the dream and the awakening, I wonder if this’ll finally be the time where my muscles don’t regain their power. I contemplate being lost to the darkness forever, until either my mind or body deteriorates and I’m turned to dust. Nobody will find me, and I’ll eventually die alone.

The thought terrifies me. It’s not like it takes an awful lot to scare me, but that thought in particular is probably my worst fear. A lonely death, in the dark, helpless and forgotten while the world moves on without me.

It’s not dissimilar to how I currently _live,_ but this isn’t something I’d like to perpetuate until the end of my life. Luckily, it’s only a few seconds before I can begin to feel things again and regain the ability to wiggle my fingers, and tonight I’m spared from the embrace of the abyss. The sensation passes down from the top of my head — my hair pushed back against my scalp by its positioning on my bedsheets, then the pressure of the mask on my forehead, and the weight on my nose.

My face still hurts.

I reach out to pull the Uplink off and sit up. My muscles ache in relief as they stretch out, and I bring my fingers under my nose to double-check. The skin is tender to the touch, and it hurts, but I don’t feel any blood. I press down a little firmer, just to make sure I’m not making things up with my mind, and I release a little whimper as the shocks of pain fly up and down my chin.

I sit there in my bed for a few minutes, just sort of letting it sink in. It’s such a simple, small thing, but I’m shaken to my core by the fact that this thing is capable of dealing me any genuine corporeal harm — or at least convincing my body that it’s been harmed, since there’s no way it could have _actually_ hit me with a soccer ball. I sure **hope** not, anyways.

* * *

One last trip to the mirror before bed, just to make sure there’s no bruises and to check for bleeding. I find neither, but my face still lights up with pain every time I touch it. The process leaves me staring at my face again, and I can’t help but bring myself to find new things to malign about my appearance. I draw parallels between myself and Ace’s avatar — she’s way more feminine than I want to look, but there’s something admirable in how **strong** she looked, all the prideful elegance she had with every step.

It’s a confusing, sickening feeling. I know that her avatar isn’t real, that it’s some lousy idealized version of herself that she wants to project, but the image is buried into my thick skull now. Was that why I was so captivated with her? Was I jealous?

I slam the lightswitch in my bathroom off and throw myself back into my bed, both of my arms wrapping around one of my pillows and holding it closely against my chest. My eyes flutter shut, slamming down like anchors overboard, but sleep escapes me as the time drags by. I keep thinking about the blood, about the pain. The conversation from earlier in the night about the person they found that died while jacked in flutters back to the forefront of my consciousness, and I hug my pillow a little tighter.

There’s no way that the phenomena can be correlated, right?

But if getting hit by a ball had that kind of effect, what would happen if somebody jumped off one of those buildings on the Chrysalis? What if somebody pushed them off that building?

I fall into a restless sleep and dream of thunderclaps against rain-kissed pavement, and it makes me think about how similar a sound it is to that of a body falling against concrete. Red blood on black asphalt like paint strokes on an uneven canvas, the corpse a blemish on perfect portraiture.


	4. ii: persona

I have trouble focusing the next day at work. 

Generally speaking, I'm very much a focused person — my work and my craft are some of the only things I have going for me, and as egotistical as it sounds I’m really good at it. Today, though, I can’t seem to keep a good grip on my pen or give my thoughts form in any cohesive way. I keep thinking about the blood and the pain, and about what it would be like to step off the edge of one of the buildings on the Chrysalis. 

Surely somebody’s done that before, right? I feel like I should ask around, but I don’t know anybody else who owns an Uplink and I certainly don’t really know anybody on the Chrysalis. I guess I know Ace now, but the thought of dredging up such heavy topics around her feels perverse. I already feel kind of bad making her feel guilty over what was ultimately an accident, so to dump matters of life and death in front of her is off the table. 

I don’t really know who else I can turn to, though. Just walking around and asking strangers? _God,_ I don’t know what’s worse: _that_ or just letting the uncertainty haunt me until it drives me crazy. I guess I could just wait and see if more people end up dying, but part of me really isn’t looking forward to when the news breaks of a fifth corpse found with an Uplink strapped to their head. 

Besides — I'm naturally curious, and it feels good to me to learn and observe.

That’s honestly a small part of the reason why I spend so much time on the Chrysalis, to just watch and learn about the eccentricities of the little groups of people who make their little lives there. If there’s a chance to learn what the hell’s going on then I can’t help but take it.

Normally I don’t pay much attention to what my coworkers say — the most I say to them is the customary pleasantries expected of any white-collar environment, along with whatever’s necessary to give and receive work-related information. This time, though, it sticks out to me like a gunshot in a silent room. 

“...dead on his floor. He had been lying there for a few days, apparently! No bleeding or hemorrhages or anything.”

They’re talking about the newest body. I settle my pen down and reach for my computer monitor as if adjusting something with its display, but it’s really just an excuse to lean forward onto my elbow for a closer listen. My hand covers my mouth as I look over my shoulder, reading lips and assigning them spoken word. 

“Think it was really related to that game?” A guy about my age, early twenties, business casual with a loose tie and untucked shirt. I think his name is Roland or something. I’m pretty sure he handles all of the IT stuff in our office, so it’s kind of funny to hear him call the Chrysalis a _game_ like he was some technologically-illiterate grandpa. 

The girl he’s talking to, a little older than we are but noticeably shorter and stouter, stiffly shrugs her shoulders. I don’t recognize her. Maybe she’s new. “It has to be, right? It can’t be good to have that thing hooked up to your head for hours at a time.”

“They didn’t find any blood or any cause of death, though.

“Maybe he had a seizure, or hemorrhaged, or had a stroke.” 

I furrow my brow at that last one, but manage to piece together a little bit clearer of an image from what they’ve said. I guess it would have helped to pay attention to the news reports before, but I wasn’t as concerned before what happened last night. 

“What do you think…?”

Roland’s looking at me now, having caught me off guard as I lost myself in thought. He caps off his question with my name, and it’s like a blast of static in my ears. I make a sour face. I guess it’s fair that he knows my name since I know his. Just… perverse. I don’t know him. It’s wrong. 

“...you good?” he asks, and I tensely nod my head as I bring my fingers up to between my eyes. 

“Yeah, I’m fine, sorry, uh. Just—it’s just sad to think about people dying and everything, you know?” 

He frowns and tilts his head to one side. “Ah, sorry to be a bummer, man.” I shake my head and raise my fingers in his direction. “It’s—… no problem. What was the question again?” 

Roland straightens his head. “I asked what you thought killed the guy they found jacked into that VR thing.” 

After a probably too-long pause I shrug and lean back in my chair, gripping my pen as I turn back to face my desk. “I dunno,” I glumly lie as I impart ink onto paper. “I don’t really play video games.”

* * *

My workday goes by agonizingly slowly, and I’m unable to get much done. For the first time in my career I’m actually behind on my work and will have to catch up tomorrow. I hope I’ll be able to get a grip and focus by then. I just… can’t stop thinking about it. The pain, the blood, the dead bodies. The burden of a fixative mind like mine is an overwhelming urge for instantaneous gratification, and if I’m denied that then I’ll start to go crazy. 

As soon as it’s time to leave I head out with a brisker pace than normal, skipping a step on the office’s stoop and turning to my right to head home. Normally I like to take my time on the walk back to my place, but I’m walking quick as I can muster without looking like an idiot to all the other pedestrians. It kind of sucks to burn through my commute like this, since I usually cherish it —it’s a time to think and a time to take in the city’s ambiance as dusk begins to overtake the sky. A little time to myself as if I don’t have enough of that, but also time out of the apartment and away from the Uplink.

I _really_ don’t like how much time I spend using that thing, so of **course** I resolve to jack in as soon as I get to my apartment. I need to get a clearer image of what all I’m seeing — details are everything to me. 

All of the details and familiarities of my route pass by me in fast motion: the electronics store where I bought my Uplink, holographic advertisements barely visible under the dying light of the sun. The little grocery store that I frequent, the supply store a block down from it. The _screens_ hammering my eyesight with an absolute overload of information all at once, way too much to focus on at once. It’s an eyesore and makes me feel like my brain is being caved in with a hatchet.

My eyes lock onto the old cathedral, one of the only places besides work and home I really make a habit of nesting in. The cathedral probably used to be a sacred spot… but they threw all that out the window when they bolted a massive steel extension onto the top-right half of it to graft on advertisement screens, wire posts and other technological tumors. Broke down one of the towers and everything, and they stopped painting the outside so its once-vibrant color is now this peeled, faded shade of baby blue. After that people kind of stopped visiting it, so it’s usually pretty empty… and that’s why I enjoy it so much. It’s nice and quiet — this city is way too loud. I get a lot of work done there. 

I didn’t start visiting until after the city ruined it. I begin to wonder what kind of community gathered at that church and called it home. Maybe I would have fit right in. For a second I think about paying a visit to catch up on the work I’m late on, but I brush the thought aside. My mind has already instituted an arbitrary order of importance upon the few things I have on my mind, and the Chrysalis is on top of the list. 

I don’t listen to the doorman as he greets me, passing straight by and making a beeline for my apartment. As soon as I’m in I toss my work bag onto my countertop and make a break for my bedroom, shedding my jacket and tossing it onto the floor on the way there. Normally, I have something close to a routine: wake, bathe, work, cathedral, eat, work some more, Chrysalis, sleep, repeat. It feels a little wrong to break it, but last night has been nagging in the back of my mind all day and I can’t really take it anymore.

I left my computer on the previous night and went straight to sleep without bothering to shut it down, so my monitor has been blinking up at me for a solid 12 hours or more now. God, I hope I don’t burn the images into the screen — really can’t afford a new monitor. My homepage prompt tells me that I’ve got a new Email, which is a bit surprising, but I don’t pay it much heed for now. More important things at hand. I’m only at the rig long enough to boot up the Uplink and log in, and within five minutes of being home I’m laid back down on my bed with the Uplink attached to my face. 

Sensation fades, muscles relax, and soon I’m back in my element.

* * *

The Terminal’s interior design makes about as much sense as it always does, and there’s a surreal sense of comfort in that. Normality in abnormality. It’s a little more congested and crowded than I’m used to, which I guess can be attributed to the fact that I jacked in a couple of hours earlier than normal. At this point, considering how popular the Chrysalis has become and how much it’s bound to grow, it’s a wonder that there’s no sorts of server issues or queues to log on whenever it’s close to full.

On second thought, I’m thankful there’s no wait — the idea of not knowing how long I’ll be waiting in the darkness scares the shit out of me. 

I weave through the crowd, struggling to make it to the door — I walk with a sense of purpose, though I’m not really certain where I’m going. As I pass by the statue, my vision is drawn sidewards and I spot some half-familiar faces. The guys from yesterday — namely the spiked-up hair guy in red and his smarmy-looking friends. As I focus on the red guy, his friends break out into a laugh and a look of panic overcomes his face. 

Much to his chagrin, I begin to pace towards him. He assumes a nervous, too-wide smile and takes the initiative to speak first. “Uhh—… hey, Crow! S’up?” 

No clue how he knows my name, but I guess it’s not hard to figure it out if you spend any amount of time people-watching like these guys seem to do. Hell, like _I_ do, too. 

“Not a lot,” I reply as I look off to the side. “You, uh… you wanna make up for bugging me last night?” 

He looks hurt by that, and his friends break out into a cacophony of laughter. “A—… a-ah man, sure. Whaddya need?” Something between shame and obligation is plastered all over his mousey features, like a dog with its nose shoved down into its own mess. 

I shift my weight from one foot to the other, crossing my arms over my chest. Balancing is an odd sensation on the Chrysalis since you don’t really think about most of the normal sensations you experience when offline — which is exactly why the fact that we feel pain bothers me so much. “You heard about those guys who died, right?”

“What, the ones on _here?_ ” He points a finger downward, presumably referring to the Chrysalis. 

I nod my head. “Yeah. More specifically the most recent one.”

He does much of the same as me, though his is much more fervent and exaggerated. “‘Course I do, man, hard not to know about somethin’ so sad in our little life of paradise.”

I can’t help but make a perplexed expression at that one. I certainly wouldn’t call the Chrysalis paradise. Either way, I drop the face and carry on. 

“Yeah, that guy. I, uh—… I hate to bring up something that’s so much of a downer, but did you happen to know him…? Or… any of the ones who died, I guess.” 

I can tell the conversation is already starting to really kill his vibe; the way his shoulders droop and his brow knits. He remains as lively and exuberant as ever, though, his loud voice and overeager body language more than making up for the downturn in his demeanor. “Nah, man, I didn’t know any of ‘em. I mostly stick with my crew here, you feel me?” 

He angles a thumb over his shoulder, and I lean to my side to get another look at them. Same amused faces as ever. The one with the glasses flashes his million-dollar smile again, laughing as he speaks. “We ain’t hardly never leave this statue, man — all the shit on here but we ain’t getting off the stoop.” 

I shrug my shoulders. “Home’s what you make of it, I guess.” Eyes back on the man in red. “...what about how he died? Hear anything on that?” 

Another dejected shake of his head, and I release a sigh. “Nah, man. I mean, it’s not like there’d be a body to find or nothin’. When you log off you’re like, _blip!_ ” He snaps his fingers for added effect. “So if you die jacked in you’re probably gonna just pop outta existence just the same, right? Only way you could figure out what happened is to find someone who was _there,_ and I ain’t heard of that yet.”

I raise my eyebrows, impressed at how astute his point is. Maybe he’s a little brighter than I assumed. “...that’s… that’s actually a pretty good point. I’ll, uh—… I’ll think on that.” I uncross my arms and tug my hat down by its brim, then turn to walk away. “Thanks.” 

With that I’m one of many in the crowd again, and he’s once more left standing in quiet shock. His friend laughs at pipes up. “Man, holy _shit!_ This time they came up to _you!_ ”

* * *

I wander the spider-web paths of the Chrysalis for what feels like hours, lost in thought. My conversation in the Terminal lent me some much-needed insight and perspective on the mystery that’s slowly unfolding, but the satisfaction is momentary and my curiosity soon grows ravenous once more. The more that I follow the spiraling streets the more my thoughts spiral out, delving deeper into the heart of the cyber city in tandem with my slow act of withdrawing further and further into myself. 

There’s not a lot I can determine without knowing who exactly the guy was — if I knew that I could ask around and find some people who actually knew him, or who were actually _there_ to witness it. I really don’t want to make anybody relive the death of a friend just to sate my curiosity or anything, but if my suspicions are correct then there’s a **serious** problem afoot if “dying” while jacked in means you die in real life, too. 

I can’t just sit there and let it happen while people are in danger. If there’s anything I can do, anything at all, I want to do it. 

I just don’t know what that _anything_ is. I’m stumped, and that bothers the living hell out of me. I wouldn’t even know where to begin — my last resort is beginning to become more and more appealing, as much as I dread to even begin to humor it: asking Ace, the one and only name in my address book, if she knows anything about what might have happened. I kind of doubt that she’s got any worthwhile information, but I don’t have much more than that so I’m in no position to judge. She _did_ agonize over wanting to make the ball incident up to me after all; while I’m not one to hold a grudge over something that was my fault I wouldn’t mind if she thought of me pestering as her severance. 

It’s just… such a labor to reach out. There’s a nagging voice in the back of my head that she’ll think what I have to say is nonsense, or that my concerns are just stupid. I shouldn’t expect her — or anybody — to humor my bizarre fixations. 

I engage in this feedback loop for an eternity with my menu open, staring anxiously at my address book and the digit next to it indicating that my solitary contact is indeed jacked in. I don’t know why I’m fretting over it so badly. I only just met her yesterday, and she doesn’t _seem_ like the sort of person who would act so harshly over something as simple as curiosity. But that’s the thing, I guess: if you trust somebody it hurts twice as much whenever you get burned. I’ve made that mistake before. 

I really, really don’t want to think about it, and worrying over how she’s gonna react to the conclusions I jump to only makes me fixate on it even harder. My eyes flick up to my inbox, and the little “(1)” displayed to the side of it are my saving grace. A distraction — perfect. Something to take my mind off all of this. It’s almost exciting wondering what it could be, since I have no idea who the hell would message my personal email address. 

I nudge my inbox with my knuckle and gloss over the header — no subject. It’s from Ace, which for some reason I’m surprised by. It feels a little better to have her reach out first, but also sets my mind alight with fresh flame as the anxiety peaks up once again.

I swallow my worry and reach out to tap the email, opening it. 

I barely get a glimpse of it for a half-second. It looks like nothing but raw junk; random letters, numbers, and characters filling the entirety of the body. Almost immediately my menu begins to flicker and shudder, a haze settled over it as its distinctive blue tint gives way to green, splitting down the middle as it’s overwhelmed by a hail of sputtering colors and graphical artifacts. 

I frown, fingers tensing as the panic begins to mount — only intensified by the fact that I was struggling to choke down a bad bout of anxiety. As far as I’m aware, I’ve never experienced a _glitch_ on here before — not with the Uplink itself nor the Chrysalis. Is it some kind of virus that snuck its way into that email? The notion of being affected by a trojan or something when I’m using a device _directly interfacing with my brain_ elicits a new kind of horror that I can’t even begin to iterate.

I stand there staring at my menu uselessly as it spasms and continues to writhe in its struggle to _function._ Soon it flickers out of existence, and takes the world around me with it: suddenly I’m surrounded by endless, oppressive darkness. I can’t see a thing, and everything seems so _still._ I suck in a redundant breath and move one foot forward, placing it carefully in front of myself to take a step. There’s a ground for my feet to walk on, so I’m able to move forward inch by inch… but it seems pointless, given the empty expanse of blackness that surrounds me. 

Something in me urges to call out, but like always I choke it down. I doubt I’ll get an answer. 

I’ve had enough. My menu glows with life in front of me, and I instinctively raise my hand to where the exit command normally is — only it isn’t there. 

_It isn’t there._ None of it is, all overtaken by the same masses of glitched text and unusual characters that the email was comprised of. 

My senses begin to all melt into mush as apprehension and panic sets in, and the horrifying reality washes over me that I’m trapped here. Alone, in the dark. My worst fear is becoming a reality before my very eyes, and I can’t even do anything but submit to it. 

I begin to think too much, mind racing my heartbeat as the catastrophizing begins: _I’m locked in here. I’m locked into my Uplink. Nobody is going to find me, nobody would even notice that I’m gone. I’m gonna die here. I’m gonna die alone. I’m afraid of the dark. I’m afraid of dying alone. I don’t want to be here. I don’t want to die alone. This is my worst fear and it’s all happening at once. I don’t want to die alone._

These thoughts are amplified into a dull, low groan that seems to echo off nonexistent walls, pressing in around my skull and threatening to crush me alive. It’s like it can read my mind, all the negativity and fear consuming me given life by the malevolence swallowing me whole.

I swear to god the darkness begins to _move,_ as the hum intensifies, creeping in all around me and shifting from bleak black to amorphous, runny shapes. It’s intangible but perceptible, impossible to describe — all I know is that it’s _coming for me_ and wants to envelop me whole, like a sentient sludge intent on devouring its prey. I begin running, turning to move the general direction from which I came. I don’t know if I’m making any progress — the dark never seems to get any closer or farther away. 

I trip over something and fall to my knees, stumbling from my knelt-over position to plant both my hands on the ground and look behind myself, maybe searching for what caught my leg — it’s barely visible, but the glint of a _mask_ stares back at me. Its blue visage is framed by dull silver, and its blank expression is complemented by hollow, empty black holes where its eyes should be.

There’s a number engraved into the forehead: _XVII._

It raises and creeps towards me, suspended atop a pile of intangible shadow that moves and keeps like claymation. I can only gawk at it for a moment, only to release a yelp as I feel a tendril wrap around my ankle. I think back to the pain I felt, and the notion that injury on the Chrysalis translates to injury offline. If there’s any chance that this _monster_ can hurt me, I’m not going to risk it.

I jerk my foot back and send my boot right into the center of its face, sending it back. It makes a gurgling noise and groans as it releases my leg, and I instantly push myself up to my feet and take off running. Sooner or later I encounter another one of the monsters, but this one’s much larger. I stop dead in my tracks as it raises a claw. 

One of my thoughts repeats as I stare at those sharp digits. _I’m going to die alone._

The monster bears down and slashes at my chest, sending spikes of searing pain through my torso and causing me to shout out in agony. I stumble back and fall back to my knee, clutching my new wounds. I can feel the moisture and warmth of blood under my fingers and staining my shirt, and as I move my hand I feel ragged skin and torn leather. This thing got me good, and I can’t do anything but sit there and let it happen. 

I stare at it for a few seconds as it slowly advances in my direction. There are several more from all opposing directions that have materialized and creep towards me, all of them with tendrils and claws at the ready with intent to tear me apart. 

Any second now they’ll be upon me. 

I open my menu one last time in desperation, longing for a chance to escape. There’s still no option to log out, but among the gibberish and glitches I spot a single coherent line of text, typed out like a command prompt and not a coherent statement: 

_C://PERSONA_

I freeze in my tracks, staring at it with wide eyes and an open jaw. Without thinking, I reach out and touch it — and the menu glitches one last time, rearranging its letters into a cohesive image. I can barely make out the image of a star with a smiling face embedded upon it, encased in a halo with several smaller stars surrounding it. That same numeral — _XVII._

It’s a tarot card. 

I repeat my thoughts again. 

_I’m going to die alone._

This time there’s another voice in my head to offer temperance and counter my thoughts — it’s gentle, airy, androgynous. 

_What Star carries brightness too slight to penetrate the darkness?_

My breath grows deeper and more desperate as the monsters close in around me. The voice continues. 

_Where there is strife, there is hope — and there is a guiding hand. Will you reach out to take it, or will you burn out and smolder away?_

Without thinking, I begin to reach towards the Star. My fingers are inches away, and the monsters are only a few feet from me. 

“Per…”

My lips move without my thinking. 

“...so…”

My words are instinctual and effortless, coming naturally. I feel the weight of my hardships lift off my shoulders, and I find strength in the mask I wear to face them. The monsters raise their claws.

“...na…” 

Fingertips make contact with the card, and the glitch overcomes everything I can see. I see double of my limbs as my avatar begins to flicker and blink in and out of existence. I’m momentarily enveloped by brilliant blue light, and the sound of glass shattering fills my ears. 

The air instantly heats up and explodes in a burst of fission, taking all of the smaller monsters that had crowded around me with it. They squeal and shriek as their lives are ended, dissipating away like paper over flame, and I can smell the stench of burnt ozone permeating from what’s just occurred. 

The larger monsters are knocked back by the blast, and an otherworldly figure floats in the space that’s been created between them and I. It’s unbelievably tall, willowy frame draped over by ragged black robes that expose bound feet. It’s two long limbs clutch a scythe tightly against its chest, held underhanded like a boat paddle. Long streaks of silver hair fall down to its waist and float just as it does, kept out of its angelic face by a black blindfold hiding its eyes. Black lines streak down its cheeks, and a serene expression is visible on its face. It seems so at peace.

I stare up at it in awe, still knelt. It speaks in the same voice that I had just heard in my head: 

_”In any life, there must come a darkness — and in tandem there must be light. I am thou, and thou art I… I am Charon, ferryman of another world. Take my hand, wandering Star, and I shall guide you to eternal peace…”_

I look back down, and the monsters creep closer and closer. I know what to do — it’s second nature, like I’ve had Charon my entire life. 

I point a finger towards one of them. _”Go!”_ I cry out, pleading for protection.

* * *

Charon doesn’t hesitate for a single second: it grips its scythe and raises it far above its head, bringing the blade down upon one of the monster’s skulls. It skewers the beast right through its forehead, mask cracking down the middle before shattering into pieces. 

With a sickening gurgle, the black mass the monster is made out of dissipates only to give birth to a new form: a humanoid figure seemingly made out of green paper, red spirals decorating its abdomen and the center of its circular head. The other soon follows suit, an identical twin of the first one. In tandem they raise their thin limbs raise and conjure heavy winds, which slice into my skin and feel like needles pricking me from all corners. I grit my teeth and clutch my chest a little harder as my wounds are hailed down upon, but I persist even in the face of brutal pain. 

I feel stronger now, like everything hurts a little less. Like Charon is protecting me. 

I glance up at Charon — my Persona, I know through instinct — and bare my teeth. Lines of programming and code flicker in and out of my consciousness, like I’m communicating with it in a language I don’t understand. I manage to fixate on a few terms, cohesive commands that stick out in my mind. _FREI.EXE, DIA.EXE, CLEAVE.EXE._ Charon and I have a silent understanding, and it once again raises its scythe — this time it only swings through the air, blade cleaving through nothing and leaving blue slashes as if slicing through reality itself. The air explodes in a brilliant blaze of blue light, consuming both of the demons and melting them away into nothing. They release pitiful cries as their final words, and then all is silent. 

I’ve survived.

* * *

The darkness dissipates slowly, and I’m once again back on one of the Chrysalis’s spiraling walkways. 

Thank God that nobody else is around to witness this — I can only assume that the void was as physical as it was figurative, and I really don’t want to have to explain what Charon is. I’m really not sure myself, to be frank: communicating with and summoning Charon comes as naturally as breathing or walking, as much of an intuitive concept as color or sound. I wouldn’t really know how to _explain_ if I had to: my Persona is something that’s always been with me, and probably always will be. It just took a while for it to wake up and for me to know it was there.

My shirt is soaked with my own blood and the gashes hurt like hell; layers of torn leather and fabric giving way to gouges in my skin and the torn wraps I keep around my chest. There’s blood soaking my clothing and my hands; _way_ more than there was the last time I got hurt. The more time passes the more light-headed I feel, and it’s clear that I won’t last very long at this rate. Without the rush of adrenaline to keep me going, I’m good as dead. 

That’s what Charon is for. 

I summon it with the menu again — _Persona_ is now proudly displayed among the rest of the uncorrupted options, but the menu still glitches and shivers when I reach out to touch the tarot card — and it faces me, head tilted to one side curiously. I grimace and gesture to my wounds, looking up and silently pleading with my eyes.

“Dia,” I mutter, and Charon seems to understand the chant. It reaches out with its free hand, fingertips glowing green, and touches my chest. It smarts at first, but the pain fades away slowly and is replaced by a feeling of warmth inside my chest. As I look down I can see that my wounds have closed and my clothes have been mended. Even the blood is gone, taking with it any proof that I had ever been injured at all. I think offhandedly that it would have been nice to prove what happened somehow, paranoiac that nobody will believe me, that nobody will listen, or that I’m slowly going insane. 

I look up to Charon. “Thank you,” I say, and it doesn’t respond. It disappears in a flash of blue, the air around it glitching as it accounts for my Persona’s sudden absence. 

I am tired — **beyond** tired. My mind keeps going back to the log-out option on my menu, and I’m honestly more than a little frightened of trying to press on with the Chrysalis at all, now that I know the full extent of this place’s potential to harm. But I’ve found a little bit of answers in this encounter, and even more questions: what the hell was in that email? What were those monsters that attacked me, and what exactly _is_ my Persona? Was this Loren’s plan all along when they developed all of this? 

Is it related to the deaths? How many other people have been attacked and haven’t had my good luck to survive? 

I don’t have an immediate answer for most of these questions, but there’s one that strikes me as something I can get immediate closure for: _why the hell did Ace send me that email?_

I guess there’s only one way to find out — just to find her and confront her myself. I don’t trust the email system anymore after what’s just happened. 

I turn on my heel, opposite of the way I’ve been heading, and grip the brim of my hat to tug it down further over my head. 

I begin walking back towards the Terminal, and by association the stadium that Ace seems like she frequents. I haven’t walked with this much purpose in _years._


	5. iii: psyche

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> massive thanks to Arden for laboring with me through the process of editing this massive thing.

I should be more afraid.

My feet keep moving one step at a time, fists balled and eyes gawking straight ahead. I keep repeating the events of the past few days over and over again in my head, reiterating my own questions as if closure will magically materialize just because I _want_ it enough. I don’t fixate on the finer details of the Chrysalis’s particular brand of oddity like I always do, too preoccupied with the situation at hand to let my mind wander. 

Still: in the back of my consciousness I feel like everything should be a lot more terrifying to me than it is right now. Getting hit with a ball and bleeding a little kept me up all night, but for some reason I’m taking everything that’s just occurred at face value. 

To be honest, I kind of _am_ scared. It feels hard to breathe in and out, and I feel like my nerves could spasm from all the tension any minute. There’s a knot in my stomach that twists, turns and pounds against the inside of my gut, and it makes me feel like I could puke. None of it really matters as much as my self-imposed mission, though. One part of me screams in horror and wants to run away and be left alone by all of this. A different part of me is screaming that people are in danger and that I might be the only person who gives a damn.

The latter’s voice is so much louder that it drowns out my fear until it’s barely a whimper. I can’t leave other people to suffer alone. I just can’t. 

With time I get closer and closer to what amounts to civilization on the Chrysalis. Every now and again a straggler will pop up, and I see them more and more frequently until I’m back on the outskirts of the usual crowd. I stop in front of the Terminal’s distorted triangular shape and use it as something of a waypoint: direction is kind of an abstract concept on the Chrysalis since there’s no formal assignment of the cardinal directions, and the structures and buildings are usually too repetitive to rely on for your sense of location. Buildings that actually stand out in shape or design (if you can call these abstract messes design) are really useful, in that regard. 

The streets are too crowded to even try to grasp on which goes where by sight alone, but the Terminal helps me get a decent grip on where I’m at. I remember the path I took last time I headed to the stadium: left from the Terminal and then the middle path going upwards. Following my memory I make my way down the road, pushing past an increasingly dense crowd — it’s kind of odd, since the streets are rarely this hard to navigate or heavy with other bodies.

I pause for a moment to look around and take it all in. The buzz of the crowd rarely grasps a chance at making out cohesive sentences or conversations, but I can pick out bits and pieces: _Monsters. Hurt. Attacked. Stadium._ People’s faces are contorted into some deranged cocktail of fear, anticipation, confusion and amusement. Some are more scared than they are excited, others too transfixed with the spectacle to care about how disoriented they are.

It doesn’t take me long to piece together what’s happening, and my heart skips a beat. I feel an odd throbbing in the back of my head, like I’m being touched, but everyone behind me is keeping their hands to themselves. A moment or two passes before I realize it’s Charon talking to me — it doesn’t have anything to say except for a low hum, but that sensation is almost like a reassuring (but concerned) touch. 

It’s all the encouragement I need. I begin to force my way through the crowd and part the sea of bodies with my hands, grabbing shoulders and pushing people aside to make way. Maybe it’s a little brash and disrespectful, but every second counts — and I’d rather have some strangers be annoyed with me rather than let anybody get hurt. If Charon can protect me, then I can protect them. 

Maybe that’s assumptive of me. Maybe I’m being self-aggrandizing. I don’t know. Better safe than sorry.

* * *

Before too long I can see the unorthodox shape of the stadium on the horizon, and it looks like Ace’s teammates are parked just outside the entrance in a loose cluster. Even at this distance I can register the panic and stress in their body language, so I pick up the pace and lift myself up into a brisk jog up the incline. 

Eventually I’m close enough for them to see me coming, and they all stare at me with wide eyes as I draw near. They’re all painted in varying shades of distress and exasperation — closest to me are an older looking guy whose avatar has graying hair and a bushy beard looks as if he’s going to cry, where a younger girl who looks like she can’t be much older than 15 keeps a stoic front. 

She stares at me expectantly before I make the first move, glancing to and then away from her with eyes locked on the stadium. The entryway is dark, whereas it was pretty well-lit the last time I was here. 

“Hey, uh—… where’s Ace? And what the hell is everyone freaking out about?” 

The bearded man says something unintelligible, hitting my ears as more of a desperate cry of panic. The girl speaks clearly with a much more calm cadence, almost monotone. 

“She’s in there.” She throws a thumb behind her shoulder, and I frown in confusion. 

“What do you mean she’s in there?” 

The girl shrugs and looks over at the panicking guy, as if she’s sick of his shit. “She’s the only one who didn’t make it out. She took five from our practice to open an email right before all the monsters appeared, so she didn’t make it out. She’s probably trapped.”

The levity with which she delivers this news lights a fire in me, though I tighten my facial expression to conceal all of it. She opened an email before everything went down… could it be? 

“Could she log out?” I ask.

“Nope. She’s still jacked in. Not responding or anything.”

How could she be so disaffected? I don’t honor her apathy with a response and instead ball my fists, staring up at the stadium as I weigh my options. I can feel an anxiety begin to form that tenses up my shoulders as the imagery of those _things_ floats in and out of my mind, breath short and fists trembling. Simultaneously, I can imagine another headline: a third, fourth, fifth dead body being found and Ace among them all because I _gave_ up. My stomach hurts and I swear I can feel sweat on my brow.

Neither option brings me any modicum of enthusiasm or inner peace, but it’s not even a decision. I exhale through my mouth and pull my hat down tighter on my head, then begin to walk towards the darkness of the entrance. 

“Where are you going?!” 

To my surprise the bearded man says something intelligible, and I look behind myself to stare him down. The girl next to him is just staring at me. She looks bored — a stark contrast to the sheer neurosis unfolding right next to her.

“I’m going inside.” Obviously. I’m practically expecting him to read my mind, at this point.

“Why!?” 

I grimace and turn my head away, staring at the rough steel beneath my boots. I don’t like explaining myself. “To save her.” 

The man releases another frightened noise and babbles incoherently to himself for a few moments, before nodding his head. “Be careful!” he pleads, tears in his eyes. 

_God,_ we can cry here too? 

I’m stricken by that and stop dead in my tracks — eyes wide, jaw agape. Wearing way too much on my face for comfort, so I stiffen my expression and tug my hat down to hide my eyes. “I… I’ll do my best,” I say as I begin to walk towards the entrance. It’s the most I can offer.

I can feel a pressure in my head, like there’s a space expanding in my brain and forcing grey matter against my skull. Charon is urging me onward. 

I step into the darkness, ready to weather whatever secrets it may hold.

* * *

The line between darkness and relative normality is a little _too_ perfect, beginning exactly where the doorframe is located and consuming all past it. Light trickles in from the outside and vaguely illuminates the interior, affording the same basic shape as before but with a level of detail that was totally absent previously. That familiar gleam of blank metal is now coated in grime and has lost its polished sheen, and I can make out the distinct outlines of things you’d expect to see in a real-world building. Little things; conventional doors, broken benches lining the spaces in between them, and a cracked window on the far end of the hallway.

It’s all still made of that irregular metallic texture you see everywhere on the Chrysalis, but with more distinct and recognizable shapes. It’s almost like somebody drew linework on them with a pencil. 

As opposed to the infinite curve of the stadium from yesterday, it’s laid out more like a regular hallway now. A straight line, from beginning to end. For a moment I’m confused; the outside of the stadium definitely didn’t change, and I turn around to make sure that I’m still in the space I thought I was. 

The entryway has disappeared behind me. A chill runs down my spine, only to be soothed by Charon’s humming at the base of my neck. I guess I’m all in now. 

There are carts and trays scattered uselessly all across the hallways, their metallic surface rusted and wheels fallen off to the side. My mind fills in the blanks and tells me that this is supposed to replicate a hospital… or at least a building that _used_ to be one. 

Assuming Ace has been through the same process I was put through… why did it give her own darkness a corporeal form, something solid instead of my endless emptiness? 

Maybe I’m looking too much into it. 

I step towards one of the doors, and as I draw nearer I’m able to make out a clipboard hung next to the door closest to me. I squint at it and reach out to bring it nearer to my face, but any information on it has been scribbled out and rendered unintelligible. I sigh and grip the doorknob, pressing down to see if it’ll budge. To my surprise it does, and the door whines at me as it creaks open. 

Furthering the standard of irregular architecture and the structure of this place not making much sense, I don’t see a hospital room on the inside: it looks more like a bedroom. Pretty standard fare for the most part, most of the shapes too unremarkable to be worth noting. Something stands out, though: just near the bed there’s a dresser of some sort, the outlines of various trophies stacked atop it. There are names and credits for the honor etched into the base, but much like the clipboard they’re all etched out. 

I take a few steps inside to take a closer look, but as I do so the trophies begin to tremble and shake. I hear a voice calling out from all around me, a dejected admission of defeat: 

_”I’m useless now. I’m worthless. I don’t mean anything anymore.”_

It’s Ace’s voice. To hear somebody so outwardly chipper now so dour and demure...

I don’t get a chance to ruminate on it too hard. One by one the trophies fall to the ground and break, little miniature athletes decapitated on impact and cracked chalices losing their handles. The sound of their clattering against the floor takes up all my focus; it’s shrill and resonates endlessly in the small room.

I take a few steps back, teeth bared and shoulders hunched as I try and make sense of what I’m seeing. It’s like an invasion of privacy, staring right into Ace’s mind and witnessing all of her troubles. I certainly wouldn’t have wanted _her_ to look right at what’s eating me, and it makes me a little more morbidly thankful that I had to face mine alone — a rare silver lining in solitude.

That thought is broken as the broken trophies and the dresser they stand atop begin to tremble, then are consumed by their own shadows. One by one they all disintegrate into small puddles of a familiar, viscous black. I ball my fists and snarl, menu popping to life before me as the monsters begin to take shape: mangled, twisted humanoid forms that crawl on all fours, their limbs bent at impossible angles and their heads hanging loosely below. One of them raises its head to stare at me, twisting its neck so that it’s at a ninety-degree angle with its spine. 

It’s wearing the same mask the other ones did, only with a new numeral on its forehead: _XI._

I swipe the “Persona” option on my menu, and the Star glitches to life before me. As I reach out for it one of the monsters crawls towards my feet, and plants its palms on the ground to flip itself over towards me and send its feet flying towards my chest. I grunt in surprise and manage to dark backwards, dodging the attack but finding my back up against a wall. It dawns on me how dangerous trying to fight in such an enclosed space is, but I don’t have much of a choice. 

As the monster lands on its back and spasms uselessly to try and flip itself over, its companion begins to crawl towards me to try and avenge its friend. I claw out at the Star and watch as my form flickers and spasms in different colors, corrupted by whatever renegade code has gifted me with Charon. 

A blue glow envelops the space around my feet, and I lurch forward as if the force is making me double over under its weight.

_”Persona!”_

Charon’s wrath is immediate and all-consuming as its emaciated form is conjured forth from the depths of my consciousness: it slashes at both of my enemies (both of **our** enemies) with the blade of its scythe, but misses both of their heads and claws through both of their bodies. The ethereal blade rips away at their flesh to make them bleed black, and they release monstrous croaks in unison as they recoil back in fear. 

It’s almost like they’re pleading for mercy they aren’t going to get. I’m too _angry_ for that. 

“Frei!” 

Charon slices through the virtual reality before me once more, and both of the monsters erupt in a blast of raw radiation. As they burn their forms go limp before dissipating away entirely and leaving only a strange purple residue in their place. I frown — confused, and moreso curious. I didn’t see anything like that the last time I fought a monster. I step forward and crouch down to stare at it, and against better judgement I reach out to touch it. 

In the blink of an eye it all shifts upward into my hand and seems to disappear, like it was just absorbed into my avatar’s skin. “Gah…!” I snap backwards as soon as it invades my personal space, recoiling as if it just kicked me in the chest. I don’t feel anything save for the momentary disgust of slime on my skin, but I’m beyond skeptical of anything even _tangentially_ related to those things. I shake my hand for a few seconds and grip my wrist, staring and waiting for whatever might come. 

Nothing happens. 

I feel like I’ve just been poisoned or something, but I can tell it’s just me being neurotic and worrying about it too much. The unease I feel has been around since I even walked in here, so it definitely didn’t come from the substance merging with my skin. 

I hesitate and linger on it for just a bit too long. Somewhere between the cracks in my thoughts I can vividly picture imagery that I didn’t willingly conjure. _Ace being clawed to death. Her strong frame limp and mutilated on the ground. Failure, loss, guilt, life ending just as it begins._

Can’t take it, can’t risk it, can’t think about it any more. _Can’t waste any more time._ Fingers run through my hair and under my hat as I grip my scalp, hunching over to try and get a goddamn grip. _Can’t waste any more time._ I resign myself to hoping for the best as I invert myself and stumble back into the dilapidated hallway. _Can’t waste any more time._

There’s not much of anywhere to go or anything to do but to check out the rest of the doors in the corridor. One of them stands dead across from me, identical to the one I’ve just exited, so I go for that one. Same crossed-out names on the clipboard, same pastiche of a doorframe, same rusty handle begging for me to open it. This time I’m not going to go in unprepared, so I have my menu open and ready to go before I do so — I haven’t summoned Charon just yet, since that takes a lot out of me mentally and physically, but I can do it in a pinch if I needed to. 

The door’s hinges whine as I depress the lever and push in with my shoulder. This time it actually looks like a hospital room if not a decrepit one; artificial sunlight flickers through rusted blinds and illuminates the drab features of the interior. Even if it wasn’t for the fact that everything is featureless and molded out of the Chrysalis’s distinctive attempt at metal, it would be pretty depressing: nothing but a bed and a tray stationed right next to it, and a bulky television bolted to the wall at an awkward angle. It’s like something you see in a movie, where characters spend years rotting away and longing for the outside. 

Ace’s voice echoes off the walls. It comes from nowhere in particular, source and direction intangible. It’s almost like she’s inside my head. 

_”I’m so weak. I’m nowhere near strong enough to stand up on my own two feet… not for you, and not for myself…”_

A shift in the light — maybe I’m just re-adjusting my eyes to the glow of the window. Suddenly there are things in front of me that weren’t there before, or things I didn’t notice because I didn’t bother to look. Silhouette of humanoids huddled around the bed, obscuring it entirely with how they group and cluster with one another. They’re cloaked in white. The more I look at them, the clearer it becomes they’re wearing lab coats and scrubs. Fitting for a hospital — maybe they’re supposed to be doctors. 

Before I can do anything, the voice echoes again. _”I’m so weak.”_ It’s getting louder — so loud that I can hardly hear my own thoughts, and it ricochets off the inner walls of my skull like a bullet. It’s just about as painful as one, too. My focus blurs and breaks for just a moment as I bring my hand up to my head, and I stumble back and out of the room. The splitting pain debilitates me and leaves me unable to think about anything but those words and the voice they’re coming from.

Is this Ace’s pain? Is everything she showed me just faking it? How the hell can she just _hide it_ like that? I guess it’s not too hard of a conclusion to come to, considering that I make a habit out of hiding everything.

I just don’t try and pretend to be happy, I guess. I don’t _try_ and be much of anything at all.

Keeled over with my face in my hands, I manage to look back up at the door. One of the “doctors” turns to look at me over its shoulder, but instead of a face I see one of those lifeless masks staring back at me. 

The door slams shut.

* * *

As soon as I’m sealed out of the hospital room the voices cease, and the searing pain goes along with them. My immediate reaction is to try and throw the door back open and _kill_ every last one of those things, but the lock won’t so much as budge. I struggle with the handle, I shove my shoulder into it, I try to kick it down, but nothing.   
“Charon, come _on!_ ”

Charon has always been reliable thus far, but not even its scythe can leave a mark. Trying this hard starts to wear me out (summoning Charon in particular leaves my head and body both aching), so I begrudgingly accept that it isn’t moving and step back to reconsider my plan. 

The other doors are all locked when I try them — I can’t tell if they were already that way whenever I got here or if they sealed themselves shut whenever I got kicked out of the last room. 

I turn around and stare down the opposite end of the hallway, and the darkness stares right back at me. Thinking about moving into the dark is like a noose around my neck, but there isn’t anything else to do especially if Ace’s days are numbered. 

For a second I think about logging out — the menu isn’t corrupted and the option stares at me every time I go to bring out Charon.

_Cowardice._ There’s no way I’m doing that. I just can’t let somebody get hurt if there’s anything I can do about it, especially not somebody I kind of _know._

I gather my wits and hold onto them for dear life as I press onward into the unknown, little illuminating the path but the stale light projected from the hallway behind me. With that I can barely make out the shape of the passage changing — structure winding out and spreading into squared/out spirals, like somebody had taken a massive drill to the world to carve this little nook out. Ridges marr the walls and the floor around me, spiraling out into infinity and becoming more formless with every meter that it goes on. The only flat patch of space is the path that I walk on, the center of gravity in a balancing act.

Ironically, it’s kind of comforting to see the Chrysalis start to… not make sense again. I always liked to come here to escape reality, but to see it begin to try and mirror the real world...

That natural abstraction comes to its logical conclusion as I near the far end of the corridor. I’m forced to a sudden halt by what looks like just a wall, but after squinting at it for a moment I can see a vertical crease parting top from bottom. It’s a door, and it manages to be subtle enough to blend in in spite of the fact that it’s so large it takes up the whole wall.  
Something in my head begins to rearrange my brain; tiny little fingers squeezing and pulling at my lobes as if trying to lay my mind out for appraisal. It’s Charon trying to tell me something, again: incomprehensible chants and babbling, senseless and without a scrap of coherence. Maybe it’s a “me” problem — it’s not Charon’s fault for failing to communicate, but my own for not being wise enough to comprehend its tongue.

Still — what’s it trying to _tell_ me?

A harsh shriek begins to overwhelm me as the door creaks open, and I have to stop to regain my bearings. It makes my ears ache and vibrates my clenched teeth against one another; so loud and so shrill that just _thinking_ about it makes me want to beat my head against the wall. 

Soon it ceases, leaving only the reverberation of its presence — which is still too much, and more than enough to split my skull with a migraine. I push past the door and stop as I rest my eyes on what lies before me: now it seems like the Chrysalis hasn’t even bothered to give its own visage a semblance of meaning, layers of metallic debris arranged into rough, sluggish piles.

The longer I look at it, though, the more a recognizable shape begins to make itself clear. Each of piles taper at the bottom, thin bases impossibly supporting the massive weight of the heaps atop them. It’s all densely layered, a facsimile of a deep forest. Trees? Inverted trees?

There’s a vague path in the middle of it all, kind of like a desire path or a clearing, so I carefully trek deeper inwards. By my own admission I have no idea where I’m going, but I guess direction doesn’t matter if I don’t know where the hell Ace is. Just searching, just surveying, trying to stave off the fear and swallow it down. 

The steel trees grow more tightly clustered with each step. It’s only a minute or two before until I can barely squeeze through them, and as I force myself through a tight crevasse bright lights begin to peek through the cracks in the congregation. They flicker in and out of my sight in hues of red, white and blue, a lighthouse in a storm. I pick up the pace, fear and relief twisting into a vile tornado in my gut as they fail to peacefully coexist within me. 

Soon enough I’m in a small clearing, released from the oppression of the piles that surround the open space. Shorter, broader piles of refuse pepper the ground, with small pieces of metal scattered about errantly. The stouter piles almost look like something I saw in a museum once, some turned onto their side in gradually increasing sizes as their tight layers unpack and flay out everywhere. The bright lights shine out from the top of a couple of the larger heaps, flashing on and off rapidly.

I make a sour look as I put two and two together: the shape, the proportion, the arrangement. The broken pieces on the ground, and the lights. They’re supposed to be _cars,_ or the remains of them. The ones with the lights are the Chrysalis’s way of approximating ambulances, cop cars, fire trucks…

And it looks like I’m standing dead center in the aftermath of a car crash. 

Chills run down my spine and my jaw drops. The hospital, the doctors, the mangled bodies, Ace’s insistence that she’s _weak…_ it all makes sense, the pieces fitting together in some morbid, fucked up order and uniform. 

She lost somebody and she felt an obligation to look out for them, but couldn’t save them. At least… that’s what I assume. 

I stumble towards the center of the pileup, stepping over chunks of torn-up metal and kicking tiny pieces out of the way. The fragments are like raindrops on a tin roof as they clatter away from me, pattering and pitting against the ground until grinding to a halt. 

_”Just leave me here and let me die. I don’t want to get up anymore.”_

It’s a whisper in the back of my head, it’s chills down my spine, and it’s my eyes widening and teeth baring. Not only is it disarming me to hear Ace’s thoughts as my own once more, but that phenomena has never done without the imminent arrival of those _things_ to try and kill me. Fight or flight.

Is Ace talking to _me?_ Is everything I’m doing futile? Does she want me to just log off and leave her be?

Doesn’t matter — it isn’t her decision. 

Wisps of shadow creep along the ground like birds across open sky, marring the dull chrome of the floor around me with strokes of black. They all congregate around one particular mass of metal, piling on top of one another as if struggling for superiority or control. Formless limbs and tendrils climb and push one another down like waves against a cliffside overhang, their individual visages growing more indistinguishable from one another with every second. 

There’s a crack in the mass for a split second, and I catch glimpses of scarlet and emerald curled into a heap beneath the pillar that the monsters grow around. It all stems from a bronze-skinned form, and I can make out an arm laying limp and sprawled to the side. 

“Ace!” My voice breaks a little. My throat begins to shred and tear, and so my cries taper out in a dry rasp.

My boots clank and thud against metal as I put all the effort I have into scrambling towards her. The beasts are unperturbed by my voice, utterly consumed with their attempts at devouring Ace whole. My menu pops into my vision and Charon springs forth from my consciousness, and with a single claw of its weapon Ace’s metallic prison explodes in radiation. Monsters are sent flying everywhere, most of them either vaporized or too injured by my assault to bother moving back towards Ace. 

It dawns on me that my recklessness could have easily hurt her — can a Persona hurt a human? It’s a risk I didn’t consider, and my heart drops as I let out a curse. 

Kneeling by the heap, I reach out to grab her wrist. “Ace—…. Ace, come on, let’s get out of here, we—…” 

Her eyes roll up as she looks at me, and she makes the weakest noise I’ve ever heard. It’s heartbreaking. “C—...Crow…?” 

I nod desperately. “Yeah, come on. Can you move? Are you hurt?” 

“Barely… I’m stuck and I hurt all over.” 

“Can you move your arm at all…? What about your menu, can you log out and get out of here?” 

She weakly tenses her arm muscles to lift it, then flexes a few fingers. “I can move, but my menu’s busted… I can't log out or do anything. I tried before.” 

_”Shit.”_

“What…?” 

“...nothing, don’t worry about it. Listen, I’m—… I’m gonna get you out of here, okay? I don’t—… I don’t really know how, but I’ll figure it out. I—… I get the feeling that all of this has to do with people dying while jacked in lately, so we need to be careful, and—…” 

I trail off and plant my hands underneath the edge of the hunk of metal she’s buried under and struggle to lift. I get about as far as you’d expect one person trying to lift two chunks of steel to get, and as I relent I move a hand to touch my face, losing myself in pressured thought. Maybe Charon can lift it. 

Before I get too far into that tract of thought I notice Ace’s body suddenly shifting and twitching, eyes fixated on something behind me and full of fear. 

“Crow, look out!” It’s desperate, like Ace gave all her strength just to alert me.

I turn around just in time to catch a glimpse of the monsters piling back up atop one another, their forms disappearing and becoming a single homogenized mass. It towers above the both of us, our statures dwarfed by the sheer size of the thing. I can’t bring myself to move, weighed down by the sense of morbid bewilderment I feel. I can only watch as the massive thing splits into three smaller masses: two shorter ones about identical in stature, and a single one that’s a good head taller than the other ones. All of them have the same masks as before — the same numerals grafted to their foreheads.

The last ones were smaller, easier. These are bigger than I could have imagined. What the hell do I _do_ here?

I feel an ache in my head again, and for once I can make out Charon’s scolding. _Carry your flame or smolder out. The choice remains in your hands._

Fists grow white-knuckled as I slouch forward. “Ace, stay here,” I call out as if she has any choice. “I’ll… I’ll be right back.”

She croaks out a reply and struggles to shift, lungs barely able to carry her voice across the distance between us. “What are you g—“

I’m already gone before I have the chance to make out the rest of it, bounding towards one of the nearby masses of metal and clambering atop it. I stomp my foot several times, the underside of my boot creating a resonant clang against the surface I stand on. 

“Over here!” I shout as I wave my arms around, fully intent on grabbing their attention. It works: the two smaller ones fixate right on me and begin to slowly shift my way.

“Okay… okay… good, okay...” I don’t know who I’m talking to.

I turn to my left and leap to the next structure. It’s a little taller so I land on my knee with a grunt and dull pain in tandem with my leg dangling off the edge. After I pull myself up I’m about at face level with the both of them now, and I turn around to glance at Ace. She’s relatively safe, still, but the larger one is slowly creeping towards her. I’ve probably got less than a minute before she’s within reach, so panicked stress makes me act a little faster.

I step towards the ledge and open my menu, swiping the card so that Charon comes forth — but I’m just a bit too late, and one of their massive tendrils swipes at my legs to knock me right onto my ass. The pain comes immediately; it shoots up my leg like I’m being skinned alive feet-first. It comes in tandem with the warm moisture of blood, and as I shuffle to glance at my leg I can see torn, jagged skin beneath the rip in my pants. Almost too real to believe; like I'm being distanced from my own body and witnessing this happen to somebody else.

Adrenaline pumps through my veins and dulls the sensation, and I roll over onto my back to bring my card forth and swipe it to my right.

_”Cleave!”_

Charon does exactly as I command — right across both of their faces in a clean swipe. The masks are cut cleanly in two, and with their destruction the black masses fall into inky nothingness. From the impossible depths of those puddles come two identical monsters, true form exposed: Amazonian feminine figures stanced on a mount of some sort, a blade in each hand and a long cape flowing behind their backs. They both float up towards me, and I push myself back away from them to give myself some room. 

One of them draws more close than the other, and Charon moves to protect me — but as it swings the monster blocks it with both of her blades, slicing towards Charon’s chest in a cross formation. I feel a sharp, simultaneous pain in my own torso and cry out, and Charon dissipates into nothing from the blow. The other one goes for me next, slashing at about shoulder-level and embedding one of its swords right into my left arm. Nerves seize up, tendons tear, and my flesh is torn through just as easily as the leather of my jacket. My vision goes blurry, and I’m left too weak to even release a shriek. Nothing leaves my mouth but a defeated grunt. 

The force knocks me off the side of the structure I’ve climbed atop and I fall to the ground, landing hard on my shoulder. I swear I can feel something break, and it goes numb shortly after. I’m barely lucid enough to register the warmth of my own blood covering me, breath ragged and forced in through desperate heaves as I stare up at the mess of a world around me. Both of the twins are bearing down around me, and the huge monster is seconds away from Ace. 

Ace. She’s staring right at me, but something is different in her expression now. She looks so determined, so _resilient._

The exhaustion that’s always present in her eyes disappears for just a second, and her irises flare up in a brilliant golden color.

“No,” she insists as she writhes and squirm under the weight crushing her. “No, no, no, **no!** I’m not letting this happen again! I’m **not** just gonna sit back and watch anymore!” 

Her thrashing grows more violent, more determined. 

“I’m strong,” she calls out to no one in particular. “I’m **so** much stronger than anybody will ever know! I’m **not** weak! I’ll never be weak again!” 

As she forces her hands up against the ugly wreckage of rust and steel, it begins to give, and eventually lift upwards. Her crumpled frame rises to a knee, and then a stand as she lifts the entire thing above her head, and then releases a scream of sheer unadulterated rage as she **throws** it off of herself and into the massive monster that was staring her down. The thing is destroyed near immediately by it, and with that obstacle out of the way she turns to face me and my two predators. Her stature is as tall and proud as ever, and the fear once in her eye is nowhere to be seen. 

She was strong all along. I wonder if she knew that. I almost feel bad that I’m surprised.

* * *

“Crow…! Hold on, all right!? It’s **my** turn now!” 

I feel a distinct sense of deja vu as she brings her menu up, corrupted as mine was just a few hours ago. Ace reaches out to touch it, and I can make out the frame of another tarot card from the other side: a feminine form making a companion out of a lion, the sun shining radiantly above it as the two glance up into infinity. 

Her fingers graze it, and her entire avatar glitches: it flickers in and out of frame and becomes pixelated, discolored and double-visioned before reappearing in one piece. 

Two broken pillars attached to chains appear from nothingness and strike the two monsters with violent force, the great power with which they’re swung knocking them both back and away from me.

The monsters suddenly re-affirm their focus onto their new target, and the most immediate threat: Ace’s Persona. A muscular, robust frame covered in gold and stripped from the waist up, chains and tattered robes hanging from its waist. Its long, voluminous hair hangs as low as the pillars chained to its wrists do, and its eyes remain shut with blood streaming down from perpetually-shut eyes. 

It speaks in a deep, commanding tone…

_”With wounds come scars, and with scars come resilience. Only through fortitude of spirit may we weather the burdens placed upon us by our journey. I am thou, and thou art I… I am Samson, bearer of Strength. Let me weather the weight of your woes so that you may grow stronger...”_

Ace doesn’t waste a second. She bounds forward and swings a fist through the air to direct Samson, a wide grin on her face. “Oh, man, I haven’t felt this alive in _ages!_ C’mon, Samson, _bash_ ‘em!” Samson grips its chains and slams both of the broken pillars into the two remaining monsters on command, the impact sending both of them flying backwards. As they skid to a stop they look back up at Samson and its owner, more _annoyed_ than weakened.. Ace’s attacks don’t seem to really _hurt_ them much, but she’s so damn determined and relentless that they don’t really have a chance to do much. Her attacks just keep _coming._

Now’s as good a time as ever. The torn muscles near my shoulder burn and demand mercy as I force them to work, but I give them no reprieve. My trembling fingers move over the glowing text of my menu as it pops to life, barely able to graze an option to select it. I can move just enough to summon Charon, who glitches to life above me and stares down at my pitiful state with a sympathetic look. It already knows what to do, as its fingers graze my wounds and its magic works its way over my body. I’m not fully healed this time — way too hurt for that, as these are way more than some minor slashes — but my shoulder doesn’t _feel_ broken anymore and my bleeding has stopped. It’s about as good as I can ask for.

I groan as I force myself back to my two feet, then yell at her from across the battlefield: “Ace, get out of the way!” I point at the two monsters again to direct my intent, and it seems to take her a minute to register what I mean before she says “Ohh, gotcha!” and hops backwards. Charon slices through the air and bears down on our two enemies with its nuclear energy, which finally seems to weaken them enough to have any palpable effect: both of them fall down to the ground, trembling and helpless. 

Ace finishes up by having Samson pound them into nothing. Whenever its columns lift up after final impact, there’s nothing there but more of that purple goo but earlier. “Aw, _yeah!_ C’mon, I’m just getting started, man, don’t tell me that’s all there is!” As she hops on the graves of our enemies the purple stuff gets absorbed into her feet, which she seems none the wiser to. I would offer a comment, but in the background of her revelry the _massive_ spiral of darkness she threw that heap at is coming back for a rematch.

“Not quite — behind you!” I jab a finger out to drive the point home. 

Ace turns herself around in midair to face her newest aggressor, which turns into another puddle as it births a new monster: a muscular arm coated in crimson reaches out to pull itself up, revealing a brutish frame that’s taller than Ace and I combined. A trio of horns sprout from its bald head, matching sharp fangs and tusks that distend from its mouth. The only thing it carries besides the modest blue-and-white clothing it wears is a massive metallic club with a blade on the end. 

I actually recognize this one — it’s an Oni. I studied Japanese traditional art a lot back in college, which is coming to the forefront of my consciousness at the absolute **strangest** of times. 

The Oni stares at us for a moment before babbling incoherently and trudging towards us, ground shaking with every heavy step. Ace actually seems frightened by this one and steps away to avoid it, looking at me desperately. 

“You have any plans!?” Excitement butts heads with desperation, Ace lucidly aware of the danger but eager to face it head-on.

“I’m working on it…” I think I am, anyways. It’s mostly a matter of improvization. “...uh, try hitting it!” 

Ace makes a confused face, brow raised and eyes critical. “You mean, like, with my hand?” She raises a balled fist to verify what I ask of her, as if she actually plans on doing it should I give the go-ahead. 

I violently shake my head, the Oni growing closer with every second. We don’t have time for miscommunication. “No, with your Persona! See how it handles that!” 

“Oh! _Gladly,_ in that case. Heh, heh, heh…” Ace shoves her fist through her menu and brings out Samson in a flash of pixelated light, goading it to engage with the Oni in melee. As it swings its great weights at its enemy, the Oni deflects it with a swing of its club and then swings at Samson itself… which seems to deter it little, as Samson only continues to beat down and hail upon the demon with a flurry of clubs and swings. Each one is deflected by the hilt of the Oni’s weapon, but the sheer frantic pace of Ace’s onslaught means that the Oni can’t get a hit in either — its eyes are transfixed on Samson, bared teeth giving us an audience to a variety of strained grunts and growls.

Now’s my chance. 

“Charon!” I beckon, bringing forth my Persona. Charon wastes no time swinging its weapon and heating up the air around the Oni, enveloping it in explosion after explosion as Samson dissipates to protect itself. That distraction provided the perfect opening to take the Oni down as it falls down onto a knee, barely able to support itself and leaning on its staff just to be able to remain kneeling. 

I almost begin to celebrate.

After a few moments, though, it clambers back to its feet. I open my mouth to say something, but it’s cut off before I get a chance to spit it out: the Oni interrupts by swinging its weapon at us, which slams against the ground and sends shocks that knock both Ace and I off our feet. I land on my back and hit my head on the steel floor while Ace plops right down on her ass. The impact sends us into a daze before either of us really have a chance to register what’s happening. It’s not until I see the shadow of the Oni’s club about to bare down on me that I regain my lucidity; I roll to my left just before the thing flattens me. The blade of the club embeds itself in the metal floor beneath us — if I had waited just a second more I’d be dead -- and the thing busies itself struggling to reclaim it. 

Footsteps clatter from beside me, combined with the sound of Ace’s voice slowly rising in volume and intensity. I look over to see what she’s doing, and as she draws near I swear to God that time stops for a moment: the Oni is looking right at her, having left its guard down while being distracted by its club. She’s broken out into a full-on sprint headed right for it, inches away from its oversized head with a face full of vigor. 

Time resumes, and Ace immediately puts to work showing off those athletics skills that I was so stricken by and captivated with. _”Haaaaaaaaaaaah….!”_ The toe of her cleat immediately swings up and towards the Oni’s jaw, sending its head backwards in a painful-looking jerk motion as it’s knocked back onto its side. Ace completes the motion with a graceful backflip and lands on her feet, stumbling back a bit to regain balance before standing and watching the results of her kick: the Oni groans and falls back onto its side, still and silent before it begins to melt and sink into a pool of black sludge. 

The world of scrap and distorted memory around us begins to flicker in and out of our consciousness, pixelating and glitching as it struggles to remain tangible. The darkness is replaced with perpetual light, and the endless forest of ragged metal is replaced with the familiar shape of the stadium’s playing field. I’m seated dead in the center, and Ace stands a few meters away from me staring at the remains of the Oni: more of that enigmatic material that’s haunted me this entire time. 

Somehow, we’re both still alive.

* * *

I move a hand to try and push myself up off my feet, but as I attempt to lift my own weight bolts of sharp pain run up my limb and to the shoulder that I had nearly snapped a few moments before. A yelp escapes me, then I double back over onto the ground: Charon’s healing is enough to keep me from dying, but not by much — and landing on my head when I got knocked down for the third time isn’t doing me any good, either. I sit up and remain slouched forward, staring at the gashes on my legs and the blood that stains them. 

It’s all starting to come over me now: the fact that I just risked my life (again) for a stranger, and that if it weren’t for Ace then I would very likely be another case of death on the Chrysalis. I wonder what they would say about me on the news report. I wonder how long it would be before they found me — maybe they’d notice when I wasn’t coming into work or something. The sight of blades swinging at me and the feeling of my bones snapping under the impact of my body, and all of the adrenaline pumping through my veins as my heart threatened to explode from duress. 

None of it’s real, and I’m aware of that. In the real world I’m (probably) alive and well, and every single bit of this is confined purely to the Chrysalis. But that doesn’t make the fear any less potent in my mind, and it doesn’t help me unglue my mind from the thought that I knowingly ran the risk of dying just now and came closer to it than I would have liked.

What the hell am I doing? Why am I doing this? The death of people I don’t know has never affected me before, and I’ve never been so much of a bleeding heart that I’m saddened by loss just by proxy. I can’t even confirm any of this is related to people dying, it’s just a hunch in my mind. 

“Crow, holy _shit!_ ” The sound of Ace’s rough, husky voice snaps me out of my latest bout of navelgazing. I jump a little bit and look over to where she stood just in time to see her running towards me. She wraps her sinewy arms around me as she leans over to lift me up the ground, hollering all the while. “That was fuckin’ _awesome!_ Jesus Christ, what _was >/i> that? How’d you get your Persona!? How do I even know what a Persona is!?” _

She’s far too rough for my fragile body in its current state, and I release a desperate groan of pain as she swings me around like a ragdoll. “Personal space,” I plead, and after a few more seconds she relents and places me back on my feet. 

“Sorry, I just… got excited.” She’s like a kid, the way she pouts and mumbles out her apology. It turns to sympathy soon after, and I can’t help but feel uncomfortable with it. Too unfamiliar. “Jeez, you look really bad… are you gonna be okay?” 

I have to lean over and support myself with my hands on my knees, shrugging my shoulders. “I don’t know. I’ll probably be fine whenever I log off, just… sore as hell. Injuries don’t transfer over to the real world, even if—…. even if your body thinks they do.”

She makes a face. “How do you know that?”

“You hit me with the ball, remember?” 

Ace now looks guilty as all hell, and she stomps as she throws her fists down at her side. “Oh, _gawd,_ I forgot about that! I still gotta—…”

“Don’t,” I interject through barred teeth as I glare at her through the corner of my eye. Why is she so fixated on that? Why isn’t she so perturbed by the near-death experience she’s just had? 

I realize as I think about it that she likely hasn’t made the same hypothesis as me. I force myself to stand up straight and wave my hand dismissively. “...don’t…. don’t worry about it. You saved me earlier, so we can just—… we can just call it even.” 

Ace doesn’t seem as satisfied by that one as I had hoped she would be. “Why’d you come after me, anyways? It’s just making more trouble for yourself…”

“Because people are dying while jacked into the Chrysalis and I think it’s got something to do with that email.” 

“Wait, you got one too!?” Her eyes are as big as soccer balls. 

I nod my head and scoff a little as I cross my arms, looking away and to the side. “Yeah, obviously—… it said _you_ sent it to me. That’s honestly why I came to begin with... to see what the hell was going on there.”

I deliberately don’t look at her, because I can tell I’m being a little too harsh. The stress is starting to mount and seriously get to me here. 

“I mean… I got one, too,” she begins — her voice tells me all I need to know about how being snapped at is hurtful and I scowl at myself for it. “I didn’t send you anything that I can remember… the first time I opened my mail today was to open that one email, and I haven’t been able to open it since ‘cuz my menu was messed up.” 

My head lifts up a bit, ink so I can regard her in my peripheral vision. I decide to humor her, or at least to act under the pretense that she speaks the truth. “What time did you open it?”

“A couple hours ago, maybe. It wasn’t that long ago.”

I nod my head a little — the times line up, since that’s about when I got home and glanced at my inbox this evening. 

A thought dawns over me.

“Check... check your outbox,” I say. 

“What for?” 

“I think that email might automatically forward itself whenever you open it.” 

“Seriously!? What about yours?”

“I don’t have any contacts besides you.” 

Pity washes over her face, and I tighten my arms around myself and let my grimace grow deeper. I don’t like being _seen_ at all, much less _pitied._. I don’t need it. 

Luckily for me she doesn’t linger on it for too terribly long. Ace opens her menu and navigates to her outbox — “hey, my menu says ‘Persona’ now! Pretty cool…” — only to stare at the results silently. 

“U-uhhhh… it forwarded, it looks like.” 

My lips tighten; it’s simultaneously alarming and vindicating to know that I was right. “To how many contacts?” 

“...all of them.”

“What?” I unfold my arms and limp over to her, staring at her menu from the other side. “Are you kidding me? How many contacts do you have!?” 

“Well, a bunch, but… most of them are just email contacts. Most of them don’t use the Chrysalis, all but four or five or something like that.” 

I’m a little surprised by that. She doesn’t seem like the sort who would keep an extensive list of online pen pals, but then again I’m shocked somebody like her uses an Uplink to begin with. “How many of them have opened it?” 

She glances to the side, her expression perking up. “It looks like it’s just you. Probably too busy with sports or not logged in or something...” 

“Okay, that’s—… that’s a relief, at least. Can you send them an email saying not to open the previous one and to delete it?” I hesitate and furrow my brow. “Who sent you the last one, anyways?” 

“Yeah, I can, just gimme a sec. And, uh, it was Cosmas.”

“Who the hell’s Cosmas?” 

Ace makes a face, put off and disgusted by either my reaction or the person we’re talking about. “You know the creepy guy that was hitting on me whenever we met?”

It takes a second, but eventually his ratlike facial features and smug demeanor float to the front of my consciousness. “...unfortunately.” 

“He did — he made me add him after you went offline last night. You think he might have gotten infected, too?” 

“I don’t know.” I draw a hand up to my face pensively — Cosmas didn’t seem to be the most scrupulous sort, so I can’t really shake the notion that his involvement in all this is greater than Ace might suspect. “I haven’t heard anything about another death… yet, at least, so he’s probably still alive.”

“What makes you say ‘probably?’” Ace scrunches her nose up at me. 

“Well, they can’t report on a death unless they find a body, since—... apparently whenever you die while jacked in you just disappear, as if you were—um, as if you were logging out. If he lives alone it might take a bit to find him if he died, so…” 

Ace groans and claws at the air aimlessly, agonized by my fixation on theoretical death. I can feel her annoyance in my bones — it’s humiliating. I pull my hat down closer over my head in response, saying nothing. 

“Oh come _on,_ he’s not _dead!_ Look, I’ll send him a…” Ace trails off as a startled look as she opens her contact list. “...email.” 

“What?” I ask, finally managing to make eye contact once more.

“He’s, uh… it looks like he removed me…”

My eyes widen a little, every bit of me becoming swamped with suspicion. “...that—… so he’s probably not _dead,_ but keeping you long enough just to send an email and then cut contact…” 

The alternative theory that I had considered in lieu of Cosmas’s demise holds more and more weight the more I think on it: he’s the originator of it. I groan and reach over to hold my injured arm by its shoulder, only barely able to keep myself together at this point.

“I need answers from this guy,” I mumble, and Ace nods affirmatively. “Yeah, he wasn’t exactly, y’know… _nice,_ but I didn’t expect he’d do something like this…” 

“Do you know where on here I can find him?” 

Ace pauses to think on it, filling the empty space with an elongated “uuuhhhhh.” Soon she shrugs her shoulders. “He mentioned wanting me to check out this club he liked…” 

My head tilts up as I rack my brain for any familiarity. Now that I think about it, there _is_ an informal nightclub in one of the larger buildings near the Terminal. Slowly but surely the Chrysalis begins to feel more and more like a proper city, with its users carving out little pockets of life and culture among an endless expanse of illogical data. I can’t help but wonder how they do it. 

“I… think I know the one. I’ll, uhh, check it out and see if I can find a lead on him whenever I… rest up a little. Thanks for the help, but I need t—“ 

“ _You?_ ” Ace looks offended, hands on her hips and legs spread wide as she leans forward to stare at me in disbelief. “What about _me,_ huh? This involves me too!” 

I look away from her and cross my arms again, the tender wounds on either limb aching from the movement. For a second I can’t say anything, too encroached in my own thoughts to articulate my reasoning. The reality is that it’s one thing if I end up getting myself killed from sticking my nose where it doesn’t belong, but I can’t just compromise anybody else like that. I saved Ace because I couldn’t sit by and do nothing — to let her back into this would make it all for naught. 

I settle on an excuse, finally. “...don’t do well with other people. You should—...probably just stay out of it.”

“You sure as hell did just fine whenever we were fighting that thing just now! Did you see what I could do with my Persona!? I can hold my own, y’know. Besides, it’s personal since they came for me and saw all that nasty stuff I had going on in my head.” 

My eyes widen a little as Ace quietly confirms my suspicions. “...so it does come from the mind of who it infects.”

She looks confused, but then nods. “I mean, yeah, obviously. Kinda embarrassing that you saw it — what was yours, anyways?” 

That makes a door slam in my mind, and I aggressively shake my head. It makes my neck ache. “Don’t want to talk about it.” 

“Oh, _come on,_ you saw everything I—“

_”Look…”_ I sigh and exasperatedly shove my hands into my pockets, turning away as if I’m prepared to hobble off. “...I’m not used to being around other people. This—...this is the longest conversation I’ve had in months. Maybe years, I don’t really know. So I don’t—...I really don’t want to just lay everything out to someone, okay? Baby steps.” 

We let a long, awkward silence perpetuate between us, both wearing expressions torn between frustration and plain discomfort. Ace is the first to break it. 

“...sorry, then.” 

I look back at her and wave my hand. “It’s—… it’s fine. Look, we can—…” I release a breath through my nose. I can tell Ace isn’t going to take “no” for an answer, and trying to fend her off will probably do much more harm than good, so I begrudgingly accept my fate. “...what time is it for you, right now?” 

“About midnight.” 

I glance off at the ground. “It’s eight or nine for me — three or four time difference. I get home and log on every day at about five my time, which should be around eight for you, so… we can meet up then. I can come here whenever I get a chance—… assuming you’ll be here, that is.”

She perks up at the notion of being included. “Yeah, totally! I spend pretty much all day jacked in so that’s not much of an issue.”

It’s perplexing to me that a self-styled athlete spends so much time online. Ace grows more and more of an enigma with each little fragment of information that I can glean about her; an obscured image more difficult to read than pure darkness. 

How many other layers does she have? What answers rest behind closed doors, the exhibition having fallen flat at the fringes of her identity?

“...sounds good to me, then. Go—… go talk to your friends and let them know you’re okay, and get to sending those emails. I’m gonna… go sleep all of this off.” 

She nods and begins bounding towards the staircase off the field. “You got it!” After she ascends a flight of stairs, she stops and stares back at me from the landing.

“...and hey, Crow?” 

“Yeah?” I stare up at her with hands in my pockets. 

The way she looks over her shoulder at me carries a warmth and trust that I don’t think I’ve seen her display before. Her smile is soft, subtle, understated — a line barely etched and birthed from broken lead, but she wears it so proudly that it’s as if it were a light in a storm. 

“Take care of yourself, okay?”

I don’t know how to take it and just gaze up in silence for what feels like hours. Nobody’s really ever been concerned with me before. I slowly begin to nod my head and flash a thumbs up. “I’ll try my best.” 

That goofy smile pops right back onto her lips, all sincerity and vulnerability gone in favor of how she always beams: wide, ditzy and toothy. “And that’s the best you can do! See ya later!” 

I watch her disappear from my vision as she bounds up two steps at a time, then wait for a few seconds before logging off.

* * *

When I regain control over my body the first thing that hits me is the ache — everywhere I had gotten hurt when fighting hurts my actual body, too. I don’t see or feel any blood on my bed sheets, and I can move just fine in spite of the pain. Just to be safe I let my fingers wander around my body to feel for any wounds and check for bruising: both arms first, then my legs, and finally nervously tracing between my breasts and across my sternum. Nothing but increased stinging when I touch them, not so much as a scratch. 

Still hurts though. I’ll probably feel better in the morning like last time, but it’s a bitch to deal with at this exact moment. Just grin and bear it like always.

I’ve got a lot to think about. Every thought and every problem bludgeons my skull at once, impacts too frequent and brutal to have any individual cohesion. No single worries, no clear concepts, only the weight of it all slamming into me and leaving me winded. 

I haven’t even had the time to process it. It’ll probably come back to me later and give me a panic attack, but for now I just shut my eyes and fall asleep before I have time to think about it. 

I dream of houses that have yet to become homes and empty corridors begging for memory. Places who have had their memories stolen and replaced with a pastiche of sentiment, faces grafted to their bodies with the expectation that they’d come to identify with them. There are crowds without a single face in them and actors in a play that tells a comfortable half-truth, the harsh realities of the narrative tucked away and blotted out of the script. 

If you try hard enough you can twist objectivity to carry whatever shape you want it to, if held up to the right light. Just be wary of anybody who’s got a different view of what you’re looking at.


	6. iv: layered

My limbs don’t want to cooperate with me come morning.

As soon as I’m relieved from the weight of sleep pressing against my chest, all of my attention fixates on how I can hardly move. When I try and move my feet they go half an inch with all the effort necessary to walk a mile, and as I curl my fingers towards my palms I feel them trembling in desperate exertion. 

I’m not awake enough yet to feel panic, and I just release a groan and let my head go limp against my pillow. Memories of the previous evening reassemble themselves one at a time; soon enough I can recall everything in relative clarity. I begin to worry that I actually hurt myself this time, or that the injuries sustained on the Chrysalis are now permanent. I’m too weak to even sit up without placing a hand on my headboard and struggling to lift myself upright, all constitution drained and leaving me as fragile as snow under soles. 

My entire frame crumples up against my wall, left cheek mushed and twisting the rest of my face into a mush of half-legible facial features. Then another sensation crawls up my body. It’s slow, but immediately apparent as if a knife were being sank right into my gut with a lethargic hand — bitter pain and tension like I’m about to pull every muscle in my abdomen at once, teetering over the edge. 

My gut snarls and the pain is supplanted by a rumble from within. Now I remember. I haven’t eaten since yesterday morning; too preoccupied with jacking in to think about it and too exhausted afterwards to get out of my bed. 

I force my legs over the side of my bedframe and carefully rise to a stand, taking the opportunity to check all of my limbs for any lingering damage. Both legs work, if not struggling to hold me up from the lack of energy. I wiggle my left arm with success, then my right one. A sharp _crack_ makes itself known, invading both my ears and the ends of my nerves. I suck in a gasp and every muscle in my body tenses up at once — my body has _once again_ given up on me, and the shattered shoulder from the night before has _once again_ made itself useless by re-breaking.

I sit and wait for agony that never comes: the bones in my arm popped from sudden motion after hours of stiffness, and I’m too damn psyched out to tell the difference between that and snapped bone. I release an unsatisfied noise, disappointed in myself, and force myself out of my bedroom and towards my kitchen. 

I end up sustaining myself with a shake made from powder and tap water — the texture is gritty and the taste is bitter, but I force it down too quickly to think about any of it — and follow it up by shoving a cereal bar into my mouth and swallowing the entire mass of bland, dry grain in one go. My elbows rest on my counter, and I look over at the clock blinking over my microwave’s keypad. Five-forty-five AM — an hour and some change before I usually wake, and a good three before I’m supposed to show up for work. I guess the hunger woke me up. 

I could go back to sleep, but the thought doesn’t sit well with me for some reason. As I wait for the livelihood to return to my extremities and the pain in my stomach to subside, I realize why: my peripheral vision catches the outline of my work bag lazily discarded onto one corner of my countertop. I’ve got some catching up to do with my work. Might as well take the chance. 

I’m out of my apartment building by a quarter past six — I look down at my watch to check how good time I’m keeping. _December 14._ It’s only been three days since everything started up, but it feels like I’ve been caught in this for weeks. Time passes kind of weird on the Chrysalis; I’ve spent nine hours jacked in before and didn’t know until I saw the sunrise creeping in through my living room window. Something about the way it messes with your brain.

The sun has just barely begun to make itself known and creak over the tip-tops of the skyline surrounding me, cool blue skies eventually giving way to vivid swaths of orange and red that bathe the concrete around me. The holograms on my usual route are just beginning to take cover behind the shelter of daylight, barely visible as they dance and flicker under the oppression of a greater light. The hum of electric heat dissipates as neon lights are turned off for the day, and the street urchins of the night gradually trade places with sleepy-eyed denizens of daytime. 

The city is waking up from its slumber, and for once I’m around to watch it open its eyes instead of observing its rest. This is when it’s at its most natural, devoid of all the things I’ve come to feel such revulsion towards.

All of the cathedral’s little personality quirks are like second nature to me by now, and I feel a degree of cherishment and fondness towards all of them. Rust on the inside of the old door handle, way-too-old wood moaning as I pull it open, the hollow space beneath that one floor tile thudding as I step across it to deny me a chance at slipping in unnoticed. Wires drape down line vines from the rafters, the structure of the place not optimized for neat cable management. I fixate on the contrast between ornate beauty and second-hand mess. Somebody went out of their way to bring this intricate design to life, and then somebody else just threw some wires at it and called it a day. 

It’s an itch beneath my skin. 

I pick a bench and settle on the far end of it, then swivel my bag around and open it up. One document wins the lottery of “which gets finished first” as I turn to a random page in my binder, pulling it from its little protector to expose it to the air. 

With my favorite pen in hand, I get to work. The designs and ideas flow freely, and I’m able to comprehend the instructions and guidelines given by our clients ( **my** clients — my work, and mine alone, my workplace just a means to enable myself) with a clarity that failed me the day before. I honestly haven’t felt this good about what I do in a long time, and my workflow snaps into place near immediately. Stressful as it was, I guess awakening to my Persona gave me a chance to work through a few things that have been blocking me. It’s like a weight off my shoulders. 

I finish up with room to spare and get to take my time on the walk to my job. It’s a nice day out, enough to distract me from the city architecture’s unique brand of rustic oppression and the calculated glares of the crowds I wind in and out of.

* * *

“Hey, Roland?” 

I stare over at him with an arm on the back of my chair, tapping my pen against my desktop. Roland gives me an odd look before he pulls his headset off and swivels his chair to return my look. 

“Yeah, ‘sup…?” He sounds disarmed, and I know it’s because he’s not used to me speaking first. It makes me want to withdraw back into my shell. 

I linger for a bit too long on my projective feelings of humiliation before I manage to speak up and actually ask what I meant to. “Uhh—… you know that thing you were talking about yesterday, right? The, uh—… the Chrysalis.” I wonder if I’m being convincing. 

“What about it?” Good enough, apparently. 

I lean forward and rest my chin on my forearm. My eyes find the floor, emptily studying the patterns of the carpeting. Diamonds, different shapes and colors folding into one another. I always kinda liked this one. 

“...do you know much about, um—… about who made it? If people are being killed by it, then…” 

He waits for me to finish my sentence. I never do, so he takes the liberty of reading my mind. 

“Nah, nobody knows that much about her. It’s kinda weird, actually, because if anybody needs to make a statement on it then it’s the lady who made it.” He leans back and reaches back to play with his tight, greasy ponytail. “She’s always been really reclusive — hardly anything on her but those BBS posts she made shilling the thing.” 

“The thing?” I perk up with a furrowed brow. 

“The thing you use to connect, y’know.” 

“The Uplink.” I speak with a little more insistence than I should and curse myself for it, but Roland doesn’t seem to notice. “Yeah, that thing.”

I remain silent and roll my eyes to look at him for a second more. He hasn’t told me anything that I didn’t already know, except that Loren’s apparently a girl. Figured as much from the name, but you never know. 

“You think she’s got anything to do with, y’know… people dying?” I doubt it in the back of my mind; if only because of how the darkness, the monsters, and the Personas that we fight it all off with seem like hacked-in pieces of junk code. The way they glitch and bug the Chrysalis doesn’t seem very professional or official. I don’t really know a lot about programming, though. 

Roland makes a weird face at me and scoffs. “I sure hope not.” He speaks with a holier-than-thou nasality. It drives me insane when people talk to me like that. 

His dismissal perturbs me enough for me to voluntarily exit from the conversation, and I turn back to face my desk. He does the same. I grab my pen and sketch in the corner from memory: the masks I saw, the numerals on the foreheads, the emptiness in their eyes. 

Something about eyes.

* * *

“Shit was fuckin’ weird man,” the red-coated guy says as he turns off and squints at the crowd throbbing with life around him. He’s speaking with a certain lucidity that I haven’t seen before, focus thriving in his eyes and matched by his crinkled lips. “Never seen the Chrysalis lit up like that. Even got me and the boys to step up off the steps.” 

“Hell of an achievement.” 

He tilts his head upwards with an exaggerated outward jut of his jaw. “Yeah, felt weird steppin’ off our spot, but it’s like… you don’t know when you’re in the middle of some important shit ‘til it’s already happenin’, y’know? Or after it’s already done. So whenever somethin’ feels big ya gotta go out’n see it, just t’say you were there.” Eyes on me now, and I twist my focus away from him to avoid eye contact. His eyes always freaked me out; too beady but always wide as his lids would allow. 

“You’re just mindin’ your own business one day and then all of a sudden you’re in the middle of some kinda _history._ Y’don’t wanna just sit by and let it pass you by, you feel me? You wanna get involved, or at least…” A frustrated shake of the head as he tightens his brow and scrunches up his nose. He grips out at the air in front of him to try and wring the phrasing he yearns for from it. 

“... _witness_ the shit.” He grins, victorious. The smile shows off oversized top-teeth from behind thin, peeled lips. 

I raise my hand to my face and curl my fingers in so that my nails graze my lips and the pad of my thumb nudges up against my nose. “Tell me about it.” 

Before I leave I learn that he goes by Jax, and I’ve unwittingly made a habit of speaking to him every time I log on. He isn’t as unbearable as he was the first time I spoke to him; presumably all that stage fright is starting to come undone with practice. He’s useful enough as an ear on the ground, since I presume he’s about on the level that most users of the Chrysalis would be on: just here for fun and not thinking too hard about it. 

Jax is a college student… at least, that’s the story he gives me. He uses the Chrysalis to talk to and hang out with his friend group that got torn apart by everybody moving for school, and doesn’t do much else with it. “Phone calls you can only do one at a time,” he said with a petulant frown and arms crossed. “And chat rooms ain’t the same as bein’ with the boys and shooting the shit. This is almost as cool as the real thing — plus, I get to look sick as hell,” he says as he flashes a gold tooth. Between the spiked hair, the tooth and the gaudy windbreaker I get the feeling he and I have entirely different definitions of “cool.” 

I say goodbye, and we part ways as the sound of his friends teasing and prodding one another dissipates into the ambient hum of the crowd’s murmurs. I catch myself wondering what they’re talking about, but my feet keep moving. I never find out.

* * *

There’s a buzz about the Chrysalis today, something in the air so to speak. Usually the atmosphere of disorganization flows with a natural cadence, limbs spasming to a steady rhythm. Now everything’s tense, stiff, like it skipped a step and never found its groove again. I imagine those who witnessed the chaos yesterday haven’t forgotten about it just yet, and those who were lucky enough to have not seen it got secondhand exposure through word of mouth. There are questions here — and I’m certain that everybody else’s mirror my own, even without firsthand experience to it all. _Why’s this happening? Who’s behind it? Am I in danger? What does this mean for the future?_

I’m just as confused as everybody else, but I’ve gotten really good at pretending I know what I’m doing. 

Ace recognizes me as I appear at the top of the stadium’s stairs, and she hops up high in excitement. “Croooo- _oooooooow!_ ” Even from up here the way she beams up at me is clear as day. Odd feeling to evoke excitement just with my presence. 

She meets me halfway on the staircase and gets there in half the time I do, my downward shuffle no match for her habit of bounding up two or three steps at a time. “I’m kiiiiinda surprised you actually showed up, honestly!” Ace offers whimsy in the way she stretches up her words, humbled smile coupled with a head at a ninety-degree angle. 

I stare for a second before I turn my head and lock my eyes on absolutely nothing. Not a ton to focus on in the patterns of steel and parallelograms upon the stadium’s wall. “I don’t… imagine myself as the sort who would give up my word.” 

“Yeah, I didn’t either, don’t worry!” Ace is on the defensive now, and she flashes pink palms to deflect any accusations of defense. “Like—… I wouldn’t have blamed ya, y’know? Yesterday was scary, and since we don’t know one another that well—“

“I get it.” My words are too blunt, and it makes Ace wear that pouting expression again. Slow exhale then inhale; take two. “...anything really happen in the time that I was gone?” A little more friendliness in my voice now, at least something I presume to convincingly emulate it. I cross my arms and dig my fingertips into the leather of my jacket. 

Ace shakes her head rapidly from side to side, like a dog drying itself off. She flings off the sour look off with the water and goes off again: “Nuh-uh, at least that I’ve heard. I came straight to the stadium after I logged on, though, and I showed my teammates my Persona, but—…” 

“You _what?_ ” _That_ stresses me out. I can feel it in the back of my neck, and it makes my jaw go slack and my black eyelids give way to the whites of my eyes. 

Shockingly, I don’t convey a lot of anger or irritation — at least, it seems that way, because Ace just seems surprised that I’m surprised. A blink, one eye at a time, before she matches her words with a shrug. “I mean, yeah, because it’s really cool, and I thought it might give us an edge in soccer games…” 

“Don’t do that, please…” I beg, squeezing the bridge of my nose. 

“Why _not!?”_ Her shoulders slouch and her stature breaks so that she leans forwards. “It’s the coolest thing to happen to me since getting an Uplink… can’t I be happy about that?” 

I contract my fingers and flick them back out. “It’s not that… just… the less people who aren’t equipped to deal with this being involved with it, the better. Unless they suddenly got a Persona while we were away…” I open an eye and peer over at her. “...you have actual matches on here?” I mean, I guess it makes sense, it just never occurred to me until now. Not much of one for sports, virtual or otherwise.

“I mean, yeah, duh.” She talks like I’m the dumbass here, and I guess I am. Out of my element, and all. Luckily for me, she doesn’t contest my earlier point, but her furrowed brow suggests she’s not too happy about it. 

“...and isn’t that cheating, if you use your Persona? That doesn’t seem very spo—

It’s like I kicked a puppy — Ace’s eyes look twice as big as they normally are. Even I can tell I’ve gone too far. 

“...nevermind. Okay, so, uh—… what do you think we should do next?” 

“Wait, _me?_ ” Luckily, her habit of one-note mood swings means that she’s thrust herself right back into relative stability. 

“Yeah, who else?” 

“I… I dunno, I kinda assumed you were the leader.” She’s dumbfounded. 

_The leader. _I don’t like the sound of that. The weight on my chest gets heavier and I tighten my lips.__

__“Well, I don’t have any ideas short of scoping out that nightclub you mentioned.” Nightclub — does the time of day really matter here? There’s no day or night, no sun to set nor a moon to wax and wane…_ _

__“I guess s—… wait, actually, I had a thought.”_ _

__“H...huh?” I blink. “What’s that?” Her words snap me out of my daydreaming, and I’m once again alert and attentive. Trying to be, anyways._ _

__Ace’s posture straightens up as she twists a hand to gesticulate aimlessly. “You know, like… when you use your Persona do you ever end up feeling… y’know.” She raps knuckles against her temple, illustrating her point with some kind of abstract charade. “Worn out?”_ _

__“In what way?”_ _

__“Like… like when you’ve been working or exercising a lot and your entire body feels sore after.” I… can’t really relate to the feeling, admittedly, but I get the basic idea. “Sometimes even my organs feel like they hurt, and I get all exhausted like I can’t do anything but sleep…”_ _

__That actually _is_ familiar. Using Charon is exhausting to both body and mind for me, and the exertion hurts almost as much as my enemies’ attacks. Fingers on my chin to tilt my head up and down. “...yeah. I get a headache if I use Charon’s magic too much, too, and healing magic can’t make yours go away.”_ _

__Ace scrunches up her nose and arches a brow. “I don’t know about headaches, just feeling pooped after I hit stuff too much.”_ _

__“...can Samson use magic?”_ _

__“I…” Ace trails off. “I never thought about it. How can you tell?”_ _

__I inhale to speak, but stop. How can I explain a concept so abstract, iterate something that simply _is?_ “...you just—… you just kinda know, I guess. It’s like there are commands and executables in my mind, some kind of magic words… Dia, and Frei. Healing magic and nuclear radiation, respectively... Then if I tell it to Cleave it’ll use its scythe.” _ _

__A light returns to her eyes as she tilts her head back. “Oh! _Oooh!_ Okay, yeah. I kinda know what you mean. If I tell Samson to Bash it’ll… y’know, bash. I… I dunno much more than that, though.”_ _

__I shrug. “It—...it works well enough. Your melee attacks hit a hell of a lot harder than mine, so we kinda balance one another out. What’s your point, though?”_ _

__Ace rocks back and forth on her sneakers as she intertwines brown fingers with one another. “Well… if we gotta use our Personas a lot over a long period, that’s gonna take a toll, right? And we don’t want to be tired and aching all over in the middle of a bunch of monsters…” A thumbnail drags across her throat. “Cuz then we’d be worse off than if we didn’t have one at all, right? So I was thinking… what if we got some weapons to save us the trouble?”_ _

__I narrow my eyes. It’s not a bad idea, but I’m a little hesitant to be the one doing the fighting and not Charon — never been in a fight before, and I have no clue if my avatar’s larger frame will actually translate to greater strength in the Chrysalis. I’m… a pretty small, frail person offline. Don’t wanna think about it._ _

__“...where the hell would we get weapons? And—… would they even hurt the monsters?” I voice my thoughts before processing them internally, slamming straight into the here-and-now._ _

__“I kicked that big demon to death, didn’t I?” She’s _proud_ of that one, big white teeth flashing in a wide beam. I swear you could see Ace’s smile from outer space. It’s infectious in its charm. _ _

__“...guess you did. Now that you mention it, I’ve punched and kicked a few of them and they were hurt by it… still. Where do we get any? Is the Chrysalis even programmed for that sort of thing?”_ _

__Ace shrugs and sticks her tongue in her cheek. “If it’s not then we just get somebody to reprogram it.”_ _

__“Reprogram?” Doubt makes itself at home with mild intrigue._ _

__“Yeah, see? Same way I got this thing.” Ace holds her hand out palm-up, and the air above it glitches out before her ball from before falls into it. She tosses it behind herself and snaps her leg backwards to bounce it off her ankle, and then it rebounds off the opposite knee. I follow it with my eyes._ _

__“You just… summon that thing?”_ _

__“Yep! Pretty similar to getting out Samson, honestly. Just think about it and it comes.” The ball bops her on the head before bounding towards Ace’s right, where it disappears into bits of code and loose junk characters. “And when I don’t want it anymore, poof! All gone.”_ _

__Doesn’t sound like anything I’ve known to encounter on the Chrysalis, but I guess hacking can achieve anything. It’s not like there are moderators or an offficial staff who can boot us off for screwing with the code (that I know of). Besides… none of the _other_ events of the past few days are exactly conventional, either. _ _

__“Worth a shot. Hell, I wonder if your ball counts as a weapon.”_ _

__She releases a girlish laugh and squints, a playful sneer rising up on her face. “ _Totally_ could if I’m the one kicking it.”  
I exhale through my nose, the closest thing to a laugh I’m capable of. “I’ll believe it. So, uh—… you said it was a girl, right? Mind showing me where you found her?” _ _

__Ace bobs her head up and down before ascending with her step-skipping spright, shrugging her left shoulder dramatically to gesture forwards. “Leave it to me — c’mon, let’s get going!”_ _

* * *

__She guides me out of the stadium and navigates the corkscrew roads of the city as if it was second nature. A little shocking for somebody who claims to only haunt one place, but maybe she just has a good memory to rely on. I’ve gone down this path a few times, I think, but since it was all just aimless wandering I never bothered to map it out in my mind._ _

__Downwards at the vertical fork and then a sharp right on the landing, something like a lower-city slum waiting for us at the bottom. I glance over at my side as I follow her, tracing the shapes of the buildings on opposite sides of the narrow path. It seems people have made themselves at home within the bounds of the misshapen abodes, and some of them even look like something you’d see people hanging in offline: thin, dusky glass covers circular portholes, which offer a narrow peek into the avatars slouched over uprooted tables and collapsed over metallic seating. I can’t get a good look at what they’re doing, but one of them looks over his shoulder and squints at me._ _

__Suspicious of me, I guess. I understand the paranoia of being watched. Luckily for him I’m barely in his peripherals for a few seconds before we pass by the window._ _

__“Come on, we’re just about there.” Ace speaks impatiently, as if I’m the one leading her and she can’t wait. Hell, maybe I’m slowing her down; she’s probably capable of a pace far quicker than my usual slow gait._ _

__“How’d you, y’know—… hear about this girl anyways?” I stare at an avatar whose limbs are twisting into some sort of impossible, ragged dance on the opposite side of the path. Ace doesn’t seem to notice._ _

__“Somebody was postin’ about her on the channel I hang out in when I’m not jacked in, y’know? When I talked to her she said she mostly relies on word of mouth to get people to come and visit, since she doesn’t post on boards or whatever.”_ _

__The image of Ace shooting the shit in a chat room amuses me more than it should. “She run some kind of business, or something…? I, uh—… I don’t know how exactly I’m gonna pay…”_ _

__“Nope, does it for fun, apparently. I dunno if it’s even legal to make money off stuff you do here. If it was, I'd have joined a pro team already.”_ _

__“...who’s even around to enforce rules like that…?” I wonder under my breath. Ace doesn’t hear, and even if she did she’s too fixated with our imminent arrival at our destination._ _

__It’s like nothing I’ve seen before on the Chrysalis, in that it’s appallingly mundane. It evokes the image of the sort of idyllic suburban house that mid-century dreams are made of, only short a picket fence and nuclear family. I don’t even think they build little houses like this anymore: a glossy coat of white paint topped with black shingles, and a plain old door flanked by two windows divided into quarters._ _

__It’s like a puppy among hyenas, the way it’s wedged between the misshapen metal buildings you see the rest of everywhere else here. I guess whoever Ace’s friend is hacked it to look like that, since there’s no way in hell that the Chrysalis could have generated something like this naturally. I can kind of see inside, where everything looks just as plain and regular as the rest: furniture, blank picture frames waiting for memories to be contained within, wooden flooring…_ _

__“It’s all so—“_ _

__“Normal, right?” Ace cuts me off as she nudges my shoulder with her own, and I just make a noise of protest. She has the stupidest smile on her face. “Said the exact same thing when I first came here. She likes it that way — c’mon, I’ll introduce you.”_ _

__Ace’s dark fingers curl around the bright gold of the doorknob and twist it, only for her to gracelessly throw the door open and stomp inside. “Hey, Euni…! C’mere, I got somebody who wants to meet ya…!” Way louder and more resonant than in needs to be, obviously… and _want_ is a bit of a strong word. I lock my jaw up as she stomps right in, not bothering to shut the door behind her. I get it with my foot as I follow, shoulders hunched and hands in my coat’s pockets. _ _

__Ace likes to stroll in and treat the place like she lives here. Something about the contemporary interior design gets under my skin, and the fact that I can’t place it only serves to intensify the deep unease that emanates from it. It’s not how it look, it’s how it… feels…? I don’t know, it’s intangible. Something resting on the edge of perception and kicking me in the back of my eyeballs._ _

__Ace seems like she doesn’t notice a thing and quickly rounds a corner, both of her hands flaying out to display her friend in all her glory: a feminine figure slouched over a marble-patterned countertop, fingers daintily prying the matter beneath it apart as if it were nothing. The space between glitches out into a jumbled mess of characters and garbage text, like static on a dead channel._ _

__The girl looks up from her work and squints a dagger or two at Ace, before mumbling under her breath in an icy monotone: “...jeez, Ace, you didn’t even bother to send a message this time. You have to let people _know_ when you’re coming. It’s rude.” _ _

__Ace stammers and throws both of her arms up, like she were deflecting the accusations for dear life. “I—it’s an emergency this time, okay!? It’s _important!_ ”_ _

__“It was important _last_ time, too.”_ _

__“Oh, come _on,_ that **was** an emergency? How are we supposed to play soccer without a ball?” _ _

__I’m taking the chance to study the house further. We’re in some sort of kitchen now, not that I can imagine any purpose for this sort of thing in the Chrysalis. The ceiling is low and the floor inclines just slightly the farther towards the back of the room you go, and the counter the girl leans on is short and stumpy._ _

__“...whatever.” I can feel her eyes rolling without even looking at her, as well as them resting on me as I stare up at the odd-proportioned room. The proportions; that’s what bothers me so much. It’s so uneven and just… _off._ “Who’s he?” _ _

__“What—…” I snap out of it and look down at the girl, who’s now rounded the corner to fully present herself to Ace and I. She’s shorter than both of our avatars (not that it’s hard to do, considering we both look tall) and petite in frame, her blatant femininity only exaggerated against Ace and I. Short baby-blue locks are cut in a bob with a side-swept fringe and tucked beneath a black headband, and her icy-pale skin is spattered with freckles on her cheeks and nose. Beneath a black denim overall dress she wears a monochromatic shirt with long sleeves, black splattered with white (or is it white splattered with black?) and pixelated so it’s like a low-resolution render of spilled paint or a monitor full of dead cells. Our boots match._ _

__I’m staring again, and as I try to find something to say Ace covers for me. “This is Crow! They’re, uh—… they’re a _friend_ , y’know? Crow, this is Eunica, she’s the best hacker on the entire Chrysalis!” _ _

__The girl doesn’t look impressed, but tilts her head back a little as if understanding something. “Uh huh. Why’d you bring them here, then? They don’t look like they need a soccer ball materialized.” Eunica brings two fingers between her eyes and squeezes to punctuate it, sighing. “And… _editor._ Not a hacker. I’m not hacking into anything, I’m just changing the things I have access to…” _ _

__“But you _totally_ could if you wanted to, right?” _ _

__Eunica dips her head and points a porcelain fingertip at Ace. “Totally could. Not the point, though. Get to it, I need to finish putting this room together.”_ _

__“Jeez, what’s the rush…?” Ace pouts for a second as she mumbles under her breath before she forces herself back on track. “So, uh… a couple of questions, honestly! First off, do you think you could take a look at some code and tell us what the deal is with it?”_ _

__“Totally, if it’s nothing too proprietary or encrypted or anything.” She sounds proud of her prowess._ _

__“...huh?”_ _

__“...it means I can _probably_ read it. Whatever, what’s the second thing?” _ _

__“Second, uhhh… so… if we were to… y’know… actually, it’ll make more sense if you read the code first, I think. Crow, show ‘er.”_ _

__“...didn’t realize opening the email again was part of the deal…” I kind of doubt that it’ll open another portal to wherever-the-hell again, but I’ve had worse luck. Eunica cocks a brow, while Ace just stares at me as if she’s waiting for something incredible to happen._ _

__I take a deep breath and let my open spring to life, then hover my fingers over my inbox. The piece of mail that started all of this is still there, waiting to unleash a new brand of chaos. “...why’s it have to be me?” I ask as I look past the menu at Ace, who shrugs her shoulders. “You gotta make a good first impression!”_ _

__I don’t try and figure out what she meant by that one, so I hesitantly comply and pull the mail open. The body of glitched text and erratic, stilted patterns fills my display, but this time without the artifacting in the air around it or the bugs overcoming my menu itself. “...guess it doesn’t work if you’ve already, uh. Been infected.”_ _

__“Wait, _infected?_ ” Eunica’s already-dour expression grows flat-out offended as she pushes herself off her countertop and moves towards us, only to stop a few feet away. Safe distance, I guess.. “Did you two bring a _virus_ into my house? What the hell, Ace, you could have—“_ _

__“It’s a long story, but it’s worth it! It only infects you if you open the email itself… we, uh… we think…” her confidence shrinks as she shows her palms again and takes a step back. Eunica’s glare is matched by bared teeth, which she speaks through with focused and deliberate syllables. Come to think of it, it sounds like she’s _always_ speaking through her teeth. “You _think._ You risked ruining all of this and God knows what else on—…”_ _

__“It’s important, Euni, give us a b—…”_ _

__“She’s right,” I state to cut them both off, sucking my lips in to ride out the tension. Can’t stand arguments. “It was pretty reckless to just… risk exposing somebody to the virus like that. Sorry about that, but… we think people are dying because of this and since neither of us know much about viruses or programming… figured it would be important. A lot of strange things are happening…”_ _

__It’s as if Eunica didn’t even hear the fact that this thing has the capacity to kill people, even herself, the way she hones in and focuses on her code. “...fine, I guess, just… I spend a lot of time and effort on all this, okay? It’s all I really know how to do, so if you two messed it all up… whatever. Let me see the code.”_ _

__Ace deflates as she empties her lungs; she’d held her breath for the entirety of Eunica and I’s exchange. I beckon Eunica with a wag of my finger, and she shuffles over to my side. Her eyes linger on the text for a few seconds before her facial expression grows a little more sober. She’s hard to read, but there’s a disarmed haze in her eye. Her lips move, but no sound comes out. “Scroll down. Next few lines.”_ _

__I do as she asks, and she nods her head. “There’s good, thanks.” She reads a little more, tells me to scroll again, and when I get to the bottom she stares at that last line of text for a long time. “Okay, shut it. I don’t want to look at it anymore.”_ _

__Gladly. The menu disappears and she plants both hands on her hips, eyes finding home on the toes of her boots. “On one hand: I know exactly what that code does and I’m not sure anybody else on here would understand just what it does. On the other: this is the worst thing that could _possibly_ happen to the Chrysalis, and I was worried about something like this coming to light.” _ _

__Ace and I’s hearts drop in unison. Her eyes go even wider than normal and a little color drains from her face, and I let my mouth fall open a little bit. “What is it?”_ _

__Eunica brings both hands to her face and rubs at her eyes, fingertips moving and messing up azure tresses that hang over. “So—… this is gonna be a long story. Have a seat.”_ _

* * *

__We find a place to settle down in her living room, and we lay everything out as plain as we can: our Personas for her, and the code for us._ _

__She explains it like this: an online environment like this one, it’s a lot easier and more appealing to voice and harbor negative sentiments, thoughts and feelings. About others, about the world around you or the things in it, and about yourself. The thing about putting something onto the net is that it doesn’t go away unless it’s deleted — and even then, you can’t take away the impact of God knows how many people seeing what you said. Feeling what you felt._ _

__The more people see it, the more people internalize it, and eventually those feelings gain a life of their own and self-replicate. Those feelings breed new feelings, which breed feelings of their own._ _

__Eventually, the feelings begin to feel too, and then they’re _more_ than negative, repressed thoughts. They have agency, a life of their own, and they’re out for blood — sorrow and hate is all they’ve ever known. When you’re interfaced in an environment driven entirely by your brain and thoughts, negative emotional stimuli can be as deadly as anything._ _

__“I call them Shadows.” Eunica’s tone is grim, but that stern look never goes away. “Because they’re what nobody likes to acknowledge and just looks away from… when’s the last time you proudly admitted to saying some awful, negative things in a chat room or on a message board? And how much of it would you own up to if pressed…? Could you claim it with a straight face, looking it in the eye?”_ _

__Ace and I both uncomfortably shift at that one, and don’t comment._ _

__“Your… Personas, I guess… whenever you have to face all of those negative thoughts and feelings, or when you’re confronted by those things by other people, it’s like you put on a mask to brave it and deal with it. Your Persona is just… that, given the same form as Shadows. The virus unleashes the Shadows that fill the world around us, and tests your willpower to face them. I guess it awakens yours and gives it form if you’re strong enough, and if not…”_ _

__“You die,” we both say in unison. Ace gives me an awkward look, but I don’t reciprocate._ _

__Eunica nods her head. “Either of you familiar with ego death? The Uplink basically projects your consciousness online. If that dies, then presumably you’re just left an empty husk and your body shuts down.”_ _

__It’s only Eunica’s hunch, but hearing confirmation of my worries fills me with a heavy dread. I want to puke — all those times I’ve nearly died already, and how Ace only barely survived. All the deaths that came before we got involved. “S-so what about the virus? It—… like we said, it changes the world around us, kind of… hacks it, I guess, I don’t know. When Ace and I both opened ours everything changed in ways that shouldn’t have been possible.”_ _

__“Possibility doesn’t matter much when you don’t have to play with the rules of reality.” Eunica grimaces as she places two fingers against her temple. “All of this is in your head, and your brain is only comprehending what those electrodes strapped to your skull tell it to. Remember that whenever nothing makes sense. This world is a different place, so it has different rules, and things are probably gonna act differently than you expect.”_ _

__It’s more solid of a point than I want it to be, but I’m frustrated enough by her attitude to not linger on it. “That doesn’t answer my question.” Eunica’s getting sick of me too: she stares at me for a bit while Ace just watches in stymied silence. “...right. If I’m reading the code correctly, it looks like it takes the Shadows that come from you…”_ _

__“From _us!?_ ” Ace suddenly cries, hands on both ends of her couch as she bounces on the cushion._ _

__“What, like you haven’t felt like shit before and talked about it somewhere?”_ _

__Surprisingly, that one comes from me and not Eunica. Actually, it’s not that big of a surprise at all, but I’m a little shocked that I said it before Eunica did. Again with that kicked-puppy look, and I hide my eyes beneath my hat. “...everybody has stuff about themselves they don’t like to think about. You did, I did, hell, even Eunica does too.”_ _

__Eunica doesn’t look too happy about that, eyes widening for a split second as if some awful realization has overwhelmed her. She glues herself back together and regains her stoic frown, but it’s clear that she’s just covering everything up and pushing her worry away. I wonder if it’s that obvious whenever I do the same thing._ _

__Ace protests, fists balled up in her lap. “I—… I know that. You don’t have to be _mean_ about it…” If I didn’t regret it already, I sure as hell do now. It washes over me in waves. I want to disappear into the cushions of this couch. “It’s just… it’s a scary thought… y’know? That we’re the biggest dangers to ourselves on here, because of that virus. Not… other people.” She tilts her head down and flattens her face, lips a straight line perpendicular with her brow. “...being strong only works against you when you’re the one hurting yourself.” _ _

__I don’t even know how to reply. I guess it’s my fault for being such an ass, and that fact is only driven home by how hard Ace is taking all the information. She’s never struck me as the sort to care much for introspection, and I guess that explains why it’s having such an effect on her. Maybe she’s new to all of this._ _

__Makes two of us. “Sorry.”_ _

__She’s not in any shape to speak or take authority, so I sigh and turn my head back to Eunica (who’s just been kind of staring and awkwardly watching). “...the other reason we came is because we plan on finding out what the source is and saving more people who get infected. Using a Persona is… a concentrated effort, to say the least, and it takes a lot out of us emotionally and physically to use one.”_ _

__I blink and shake my head, fingers gesturing as I attempt to communicate the abstract in my head. “...not physically, but you get what I mean. It begins to get harder to focus or move around on here, basically. We were thinking about having some weapons made for us so we don’t have to rely so heavily on them.”_ _

__“Weapons?” Eunica twists her lips and scrunches her nose up, as if perturbed by the mere thought of violence. “...that’s… that’s something I’ve never even thought of doing. When I edit the code it’s always to create… not to destroy. It’s so peaceful on here…”_ _

__“But not anymore.”_ _

__The words catch me off-guard again, and again it’s who says them that surprises me: it’s Ace, still staring blankly at Eunica’s tabletop. “And it’s gonna get worse if nobody does anything about it…” She looks up to meet Eunica in the eye. “...so we have to fight. I don’t really wanna, either, but we gotta. That’s why we’re asking for your help.”_ _

__Eunica stays quiet for a really long time, then turns so that she stares at the same spot of wooden tabletop that Ace did. She quietly dips her head up and down. “...all right. I’ll do it. You guys brought Magnetite, right?”_ _

__I didn’t think that far ahead. “Uhh—… Ace, how do you…? What is it, anyways?”_ _

__“It’s like this gross purply stuff that sticks to your avatar if you touch it, then kinda disappears. Just becomes a part of your code, I guess. Euni can take the excess code away from you and then just sort of reshape it.”_ _

__A key snags into a lock in my mind. “...the Shadows bleed that stuff. I noticed it when we were fighting them — so it just… goes into us?”_ _

__“Eww… gross.” Ace makes a face._ _

__Eunica nods her head. “I kinda figured Magnetite was what gave the shadows a physical form. Everything on here is made of it — from the world to us. Gives everything here life, in a way. If you’ve got some, I can just pluck it out and recode it into anything you want.” She brings a finger to her chin and smirks, wrought with the pride that defines her just as much as her frown. “With enough code to rearrange I could probably get creative with it… as a compromise for having to make weapons I could even make stuff that heals your wounds or something. It could probably be useful.”_ _

__“How does that even work?” My technological ignorance is coming to bite me in the ass now: I’m not savvy enough to follow what Eunica is saying at her own pace, yet savvy enough to do more than just smile and nod like Ace. It’s an uncomfortable gray area._ _

__“Long story short: can’t inject fresh code into the netcode of this thing. Don’t have those sorts of authorizations, and I can’t hack directly into the code itself without a connection to the mainframe. There’s a firewall, or something. I’d need to be wired in directly.” She used that word she disliked: _hacked._ _ _

__Her hands move in all different directions in front of her as she speaks, growing more lively and enthusiastic the more she goes on about her passion. She’s twisting and twirling her hands around an invisible column of clay, programming made pottery. “So you take the Magnetite, which is just the empty zeroes where old code used to be, and you insert what you want in there. It’s why small things require less Magnetite, and bigger stuff requires more. Bigger stuff is gonna need more code, so you’ll need to find more empty patches, y’know?”_ _

__“I think I follow.” I bring my fingers to my chin. “So… everything here is made of it? Is it like the programming language of the Chrysalis?”_ _

__“Kind of…?” Eunica’s face is wrought with the kind of frustrated discomfort that comes with trying to communicate an indescribable abstract. I know it all too well. “It comes naturally to me to read and edit it, so it’s hard to think of it as a programming language. Programming requires a degree of thought, or translation. For Magnetite, I just… look, and I know what it says, and I can make it say what I want to.”_ _

__She’s so wired that all those garbage characters make sense to her. I kinda envy that level of dedication to an online presence._ _

__Ace has been staring patiently for the entirety of our exchange._ _

* * *

__The process is as simple as re-assigning the code from our avatars to Eunica’s own, and then back to us when she’s done messing with it. That’s how she explains it, anyways. I hardly feel it whenever she removes it — whenever she opens my code up as if I’m any other piece of data, it makes me wonder if that’s all I really am in the end. Zeroes and ones, characters arranged in sequences to be chewed up by microchips and spat out into electrodes. The Chrysalis is the only kind of permanence I feel like I really have, and even that is malleable to the will of whoever it’s at the mercy of._ _

__What if Eunica wasn’t trustworthy? What if Ace led me to a trap? If my consciousness just gets edited out of existence, will I be left a ghost in the machine, haunting the Chrysalis for all eternity with no identity or form to identify with?_ _

__The idea isn’t as scary as it should be._ _

__As I stare emptily at my hand I’m jolted back into the present by Ace’s enthusiastic pleas. “Gimme a baseball bat! I wanna strike _all_ of ‘em outta the park.” I drop my hand and look back up at her face, sharp white teeth beaming right at Eunica as she fumbles about with the magnetite. The purple globs begin to disintegrate and rot into empty, aimless code, infinite potential at her fingertips. _ _

__A hand rests on my hip. “...I’d have thought you would use your fists.” My head falls limp to the side in sync with Ace slouching forward a little bit and giving me a quizzical look. “C’mon, dude. I’m strong, but it’s not like I’m a fighter or anything. I dunno kung fu or how to box or whatever. Now, put a good ol’ bat in my hands…”_ _

__“Makes sense.” Having something is different from knowing how to use it, I guess._ _

__“What’re you gonna go for, anyways?” Eunica asks as the grip of the baseball bat begins to take form. It’s covered in a shining black finish, white grip tape wrapped snugly around the hilt. Almost reminds me of the metal of the Chrysalis’s exteriors._ _

__“I don’t know, I’m thinking on it.” Ace’s weapon of choice makes sense: she’s into sports and probably uses one of those often enough for it to be second nature. The only thing I use frequently enough to have that intimate a grasp on it wouldn’t do me much good when fighting. Maybe if I were more dangerous._ _

__“Well, think fast. I’m almost done with Ace’s bat.” Midway through the body of the thing, bulbous shape taking form inch by inch. Code assembles in fragments of matter, nothing becoming something and _something_ seeming so wrong about it all. Almost like somebody playing God, or adding strokes to a painting that wasn’t theirs._ _

__I look down at my left hand and tighten my fingers into a shape they’re familiar with: supporting the grip of the handle with the end of my thumb, wrist extended to the tip press firmly. Not a gentle impact or a subtle imprint, but a firm one. Making myself known in the only way I know how, leaving a permanent mark._ _

__The dots connect in my head, and I’m brought back to old books I pulled out of thrift stores back in school, and wire-frame reenactments projected from tapes on the computers I learned on at the library. Something long, with a balance weighted on the far end, and with an emphasis on thrusting rather than slashing or swinging._ _

__“You know what a bayonet is?” I ask as I wiggle my fingers and look back up at Eunica. She’s holding the now-finished baseball bat out to Ace, who grips it by the handle with both hands and squeezes tight. “One sec,” she says, before continuing on with her instruction of Ace. “Just carry it around for a while and then try to make it go back into your code, like with your ball. Same principle — it’s gone when you don’t want it, and back there when it is. I made it from your magnetite, so it _should_ already be grafted to you, but just in case carry it for a while to see if it doesn’t return to me.”_ _

__Ace moves to swing it, before Eunica grabs her wrist and stops her. “ _Not_ in here, please… you’ll break something.” Ace pouts again and droops her head. “Aw, man, but people outside’ll see and think I’m crazy…”_ _

__Are we not already crazy, for doing this? I don’t think there’s really any way to keep anybody online from thinking what they’ll think about me, anyway. I guess that applies to anywhere in life, but when I put myself out there I’m permanently putting myself under a microscope. I can’t take it back, not like I can when I’m offline. I can’t just withdraw._ _

__Eunica looks back at me, finally. “All right, what was it you wanted?”_ _

__I shut my eyes tight and retrace my thoughts. “A bayonet… It's a pointed blade that soldiers used to attach to the end of their guns.”_ _

__She blinks a couple of times, before Ace butts her head in. “You mean just a knife? That’s… fitting.” The end of the baseball bat rests on her shoulder, and she lifts it up and down to restlessly bounce it like a baby.. I shake my head. “No, like… it’s different from a knife. It’s more like a thin, solid piece of metal with a point at the end, and it’s usually longer. The more thick and solid, the better… more meant for pointing and stabbing than cutting. The one I’m thinking of had three sides, so it was more triangular... kind of tapered off at the end… The handle started out thick and got thinner until it was basically the same width as the blade, and...”_ _

__After a while Eunica gets fed up with my obsession with detail and waves her hand, the other draping fingers over her face. “Whatever, I’ve got the basics. As long as it’ll poke a hole in the Shadows, you won’t be complaining.”_ _

__My facial muscles tense up, and I tilt my head down. I talk too much when I get invested in things. “Yeah, that’s right.” Ace giggles and stands up on the tips of her toes. “That’s a lot more thought than I put into it, Crow. All I said was I wanted a bat and she did the rest…”_ _

__With that, Eunica reaches out to grab my wrist. I squirm a little, but relent as she rests three fingers in my palm. “Your hands are soft,” she absentmindedly comments as she begins to draw forth the Magnetite from my code. It feels the way static on a dead channel looks. My entire arm goes numb until she’s done, and I let my arm drop to my side whenever she lets go._ _

__The same ritual as before: Eunica claps her hands together and then spreads them out, code spiraling out and passing from one fingertip to another. The streams eventually coalesce, and as they begin to communicate cohesive thoughts the image of what she’s making for me eventually begins to form. The tip of the blade first, triangular and thick with a pronounced point like I ask. The shape remains consistent until the rounded hilt takes shape, and the tapered form of the grip comes after._ _

__It’s exactly how I imagined, somehow — considering how uninterested Eunica seemed in my description, either it says a lot about her ability to improvise and let her mind fill in the blanks or it means that the Magnetite has a mind of its own. I kind of doubt the former, considering the little flaws and inconsistencies in the house she’s built._ _

__If the data was a part of me, does it reflect on me now? How much of myself have I left behind in what I impart onto the virtual world around me?_ _

__“...come on, take it.” The bayonet hovers between her hands motionlessly, and she pushes her arms towards me as if it were an animal she were passing onto me. “Is something wrong with your Uplink or your broadband or something? You keep lagging and stuttering out.”_ _

__It takes me a moment to come back to reality, and I shake my head as I reach out to grab the thing. Its weight and form is familiar as I take my usual grip: fingers curled, thumb against the hilt. My arm extends to point it into open air, kind of a slow-motion jab. Feels natural. “No, no, sorry, I’m just…”_ _

__“They’re just like that,” Ace proudly declares. “You get used to it after a while.” I nod my head and look back at the two of them. “Yeah, basically—… sorry if it’s annoying, but I’m not the best at talking to people.” Eunica squints at me, then throws up both of her hands in an impassive gesture. “Not my problem. Everything feel in order?”_ _

__“It’s exactly how I imagined.” The weight shifts down towards the tip, which I infer would make it hit harder if I ever go in for a stab. _When_ I go in for a stab. I’ve never really held a weapon before but I imagine this is what a bayonet should feel like._ _

__The pride pops back onto Eunica’s face, and she places both of her hands on her waist as she releases a series of smug hums. “That’s what I thought. Like I was telling Ace, just think about it going back and it’ll…”_ _

__I release my grip and will the blade to disappear, which it does in sparks of blue code and glitched afterimages. “...yeah, like that,” she comments. “You got the hang of it too, Ace…?”_ _

__Ace’s hands are empty by the time we look back at her. “I already knew how to do it.” She speaks like we’re the idiots here. “The ball, remember?”_ _

__“Makes sense…” I open my fingers again, and with a thought conjure my new weapon back into my hand. It’s almost like stretching a limb, and the weight feels every bit as _right_ in my hand. Exact same process as opening my menu up. It’s gone again before I know it. _ _

__“Will that be all?” Eunica sounds annoyed, the sarcasm dripping off her customer-service impression as she crossed her arms again._ _

__Ace shakes her head. “I got nothin’. Don’t wanna waste any more time gettin’ to that club.”_ _

__“Club?” Eunica cocks her brow again. She’s fond of that._ _

__I reach up to scratch the back of my head, letting the pads of my fingers creep under my hat and through my hair. “Uhh… we’re looking for somebody, and there’s this club Ace was talking about we’re gonna—…”_ _

__Eunica throws her palms up and takes a step back. “Not interested, not interested, _not_ interested. Too many people in that sort of place.” _ _

__Ace bends her knees a little, almost defeated-looking. “Oh, come on, you don’t want to come…?”_ _

__“I wouldn’t want to come anyways. Too much going on out there that I could safely ignore within the confines of my house — and if there’s fighting involved you can _especially_ count me out.” Fingers under her eyes, dragging down so that the pink lining of her eye sockets is exposed. “This place exists to avoid all the awful things you have to put up with offline. I feel sick enough perpetuating it, much less getting involved with it.” _ _

__I can’t really blame her at all. I feel much of the same way, for the most part. Difference between her and I is the guilt I feel at the thought of just sitting there and letting anything more happen — if not for that I’d be all too happy to just let everything pass me on by._ _

__I pull my hat down and nod a little. “...yeah, I get it. Well, Ace and I’ll bring you more Magnetite — even if it’s not to help us, it’s not like we have any use for it. You clearly love your… work, so I guess you can, uh… consider it our thanks for everything. The weapons, and the information, and…”_ _

__She raises a palm again so I’m talking to her hand. She’s staring at her floor now, a bemused yet distant glare in her eyes. They’re not as beady or sharp as they normally are — she almost looks sad._ _

__“Don’t mention it… seriously. It’s not so much that I love it, as much as it’s all I have. Everything you see… I’m just reclaiming what I never got to experience for real, okay? It’s not work, it’s just… what I do. It’s all I know how to do, so don’t pat me on the back for doing it.”_ _

__I don’t want to think about it, how to feel, but I’m carried upstream by her words anyway. Those are exact thoughts I’ve had countless times, but I’ve never heard them from anybody else before._ _

__It’s like speaking to my own ghost, remnants of old data I’ve left behind before._ _

__The room is still and silent for several minutes after that, before Ace finally shatters it as if she were putting her baseball bat to use. “Don’t worry, Euni, we’ll take care of you. See ya later, okay?”_ _

__I’m too busy staring at her to listen, and I only move whenever Ace begins to drag me by my sleeve out the door. Eunica watches us leave and remains still, like what I said stopped her in her tracks. I hit a sore spot in my own inarticulation._ _

__“What’s wrong, did she hurt you or something?” We halt on the sidewalk, just outside the door that’s too wide._ _

__“...just felt like she understood me, for a second. I’ve never heard anybody say anything like that besides me, so…” I’m speaking in my natural voice for once. Light, vulnerable, fragile._ _

__“What? Are you okay, Crow?”_ _

__I shake my head and grunt, then cross my arms again. I squeeze tight. Get a grip._ _

__“Yeah, fine, sorry. Forget—… forget I said anything, let’s just get going.”_ _

__“Fine by me! But seriously, if anything’s bothering you…”_ _

__I lose her words over the hum and buzz over the crowd, eyes fixated on her crimson pixie cut to tell her apart from everybody else. She’s a waypoint, something to follow on a new path._ _

__I hope we’re going the right way._ _


	7. v: pressure

Sometimes I can will myself into forgetting that the Chrysalis isn’t _real_ in the sense that most understand it. It’s ignorant to dismiss one plane of the reality that we live in as more valid or important than another simply because of chronological precedence, but those layers of this reality are nested within one another: the Chrysalis exists one layer down from the offline world and tries to emulate its rules. It usually does a good enough job that I find the difference negligible, but sometimes there are little _inconsistencies_ that dig under my skin and wriggle around against my bones. 

Case in point: it’s clear that the club’s rumbling growl of rhythmic bass, all chopped into an uneasy staccato, is supposed to emulate music, but it’s still just an emulation. I don’t know enough about music to lay out the differences, or even listen to much of it at all, but I don’t really _need_ to because I can’t actually _hear_ anything. I can only make out the pounce and sway of the percussion as it throbs itself into a trance — it rattles my ribcage and makes my heart feel as if it’s going off-beat. I can feel it in the back of my teeth, or in the skewered pangs that creep from my heels to my ankles

The piles of virtual bodies in the center of the club floor gyrate and flow in tandem with the rhythm, the area surrounding laid out in descending layers of squared-off floor and sliced chunks of Chrysalis steel. It’s separated from the rest of the place by suspended layers of raised steel that resemble handrails, separating those who come to dance from those who come to loiter and linger. There’s not much of an open area to speak of; it’s all the square-shaped area of exclusion and the border around it, pockmarked on the far side of the room by rows of doors and platforms to climb towards them. They’re scattered irregularly, in manners that seem to lack rhyme or reason: some doors seem to barely have six inches between them. That tell-tale Chrysalis design, or lack thereof. 

I stare out at the dancers for a few seconds before I grimace and raise a hand to my chest, trying to quell the sensation of my heart vibrating in tandem with the pulsing. “I don’t like how this feels,” I call out, only to find that I’m totally audible even without raising my voice. 

Ace quirks her head my way. “What’s suspicious about it?” I can hear her just fine, too — the dissonance between the sheer force of the rhythms and the actual quiet of the place is making me nauseous. I grip the zipper of my jacket tightly and tug at it to get a grip. 

I shake my head as I speak. “No, just… the ‘music,’ I guess. Doesn’t feel right, especially since… it’s so quiet.” 

Ace blinks, then shrugs as she tilts her head to one side. “It doesn’t feel so bad to me. It being quiet just means that we can talk to people easier, right?” She grins, cocky as they come — as always, I can’t tell if she’s ignorant or just resilient enough to ignore the feeling. “Where’s it coming from, anyways? I don’t see any speakers or anything.” 

Now that Ace mentions it, there _aren’t_ any sources from which it could logically come from. It’s as if the building itself is heaving and shaking around us, like we’re in its gut as it rumbles and prepares to digest us. 

Logically — there I go with that thought process again. Eunica’s words echo in my head. _This is just your brain comprehending what those electrodes strapped to your skull tell it to._ I’m playing by the Chrysalis’s rules now, an intruder in its territory. 

Maybe _we’re_ the ones who don’t make sense. 

I suck my lips in against my teeth and walk forwards from the entrance until I’m leaned forward against the edge of the divider, and I support myself against it with my free palm. Ace follows, taking my lead and waiting on my input when I stop providing an act to mimic.

Again with the leader thing. I don’t like it. 

“I think—…. ugh.” The nausea starts like a rumble in my gut and rises up until it’s in the back of my stomach. What would I even throw up if I puked? “I think the Chrysalis is more alive than we think. I’m probably thinking too hard about it, but…” My fingers unclasp my jacket and then wave around, trying their best to make me seem unbothered. “Doesn’t matter, sorry. Let’s try and see if we can’t talk to anybody… get some word on if Cosmas has been here, or _is_ here, and…” 

Ace cuts me off and bounces to life immediately after that. She turns around a few yards into her bounding and lets her bright grin cut through dim lighting and thin fog — all other features obscured, like an airborne Cheshire cat. “You got it! I’ll find ya in a bit and tell ya all about what I found out.” 

With that, she’s gone, leaving me to just watch as she disappears into the crowd — old ghosts clinging to life peppered in with digital debutantes all-too-desperate to appear bright-and-lively, all littering the floor and seats of the club. Ace doesn’t really fit into either category so neatly, but meshes into it all the same. I can’t make her out after a few seconds. I sigh — didn’t expect her to want to split up, but I don’t mind _both_ of us earning a little independence. It’s good that she’s not entirely reliant on my lead, I guess. 

The rhythm hasn’t stopped, nor has it ceased making me want to vomit. The dancers keep going as if it never gets old. Maybe it doesn’t; nothing on here ever seems to bore _me._

Time to do what I do best: watch. I invert myself to lean my back against the divider and rest both elbows against it, my best attempt at looking natural. The top of the small crowds and scattered, fragmented groups of people are where I start: I hop from head to head with my eyes and make my best attempt at reading the vibe each group gives off, or give an educated guess as to what each individual person might be here for. 

It’s about a fifty-fifty balance between the exact variety of shade and sleaze that Cosmas seemed like he would naturally gravitate towards, and the sort of carefree people who just came here to have a good time. What’s the target audience of this place, anyway? Who’s infringing on who’s space, an intruder resting on pre-claimed territory? 

Neither of the groups pay one another any mind. The dancers keep dancing, the schemers keep scheming, the wallflowers keep wilting. It’s remarkable how the clash in atmospheres doesn’t seem to disturb any of them. Everybody is adrift in their own little world. Me included.

It leaves me with yet further questions — who “owns” the club and how’d they get it up and running on here? Surely they must have had the aid of a programmer like Eunica, because the interior design makes too much sense for the Chrysalis to have spit it out naturally. 

Not to mention the rhythms, but… that’s an entirely different story. Maybe they picked this spot _because_ of the rhythms. Was Ace’s stadium programmed too? She seemed to know Eunica pretty well, and-- 

“Hey.” 

I jump a little bit and whip my head over at the voice — which is deep and imposing, a far cry from the nasal pitch I’m used to. Its timbre almost gets drowned out under the throb of the pulsing in my chest, which I’m acutely aware of once again. It’s like a heart attack in slow motion. 

Two people are staring at me from the opposite side of the divider. I have to twist my neck far enough to make my spine nag at me just to look at them They’re both decked out in black like I am, their avatars cloaked head to toe in leather. The woman on the left is tall, wears a long coat and has her hair jutting out in bright pink liberty spikes, whereas the shorter guy by her side opts for a biker jacket and mirrored sunshades. 

They’re staring at me expectantly. “U—...uhh…” 

“You’re the guy, right?” The deep voice came from the lady, who now squints at me with a critical look in her eyes. 

“Yeah.” I am instinctually inclined towards bullshitting. I nod as I speak and reach down to tug my hat down further — between the low lighting and my hat’s bill over my face I’m hoping they won’t be able to get too good of a look at me. 

Mirrorshades flashes a smile full of shiny silver teeth. “Perfect. Didn’t expect you to look so _obviously_ waiting on somebody, but come on — let’s take this somewhere private.” He tugs a stocky arm back in a circular motion, like he’s directing me towards the rows of misaligned doors. Or corralling me.

“I was expecting somebody older,” Mohawk grunts out. 

I blink and push myself off the divider. “Don’t, uh… between you and me, I’m forty-seven… just wanted to look good on here, and all.” 

Mohawk scoffs and rolls her eyes. “Fuck off, Cosmas, you’re not fooling anybody. You make it _so_ obvious…” 

My hair stands on end and I tighten my lips up. “...can’t fault a guy for trying, you know?” I was in too deep the instant I said ‘yeah,’ so I might as well dive deeper. It’s a way to get information through immersion, if nothing else. After I push myself off and follow the two’s lead, I bring my fingers to the back of my neck and scratch to stave off the nerves, then struggle to keep my eyes on Mohawk. She can feel the eyes on her and cracks a look my way. Sharing a glare with her is functionally equivalent to staring down a bull, complete with the lingering worry that I’m about to get gored. 

She doesn’t say anything more; it becomes clear quickly that if I keep trying to look at her my nerves will give my act up. Time to look at Mirrorshades — the glasses make him much easier on the eyes. 

“Where are we headed?” I lower my voice a little, and my vocal chords whine and ache in bouts of dull pain in response to them being pressed past their natural limit. I don’t really remember what Cosmas’s voice sounded like, but he probably sounded older than I do.

“Doesn’t matter, so long as nobody else is around. Confidential business shit, yeah? Can’t just sit around lingering and looking obvious _all_ the time.” He’s ribbing me for something I wasn’t even doing. Can’t look obvious if I’m not even waiting on anything, right..? Even then, I crinkle up my lips at the jeering and pull my hat down again. “Yeah, yeah… let’s just… let’s just get somewhere.” 

“Straight to the point, huh? I like it.” He shows his mouthful of steel once again as he pushes through the crowd and rounds a corner to one of the doors — he hesitates for a second before maneuvering to the one nearest him. Considering how deliberate he’s been up to this point I had almost thought he had picked out a room just for this, but apparently he’s just barging into one at random. 

“No point wasting time.” The door slithers open before us and Mirrorshades waddles on in, and I trail after him. I can feel Mohawk staring daggers into my back from behind me — she’s probably looking at my wings, struggling to align the person before her with her impression of the man she thought she knew. Her silence is a canvas for my mind to run wild, and the images I paint creep more and more towards existential doom. 

I’m anxious enough when I’m trying to be myself. Assuming a character crafted from a handful of half-baked perceptions makes me want to worm my way out of my skin. 

When we’re both in Mohawk hesitates before following suit, and stances herself in front of the door as it slides shut behind her. She folds one hand in front of another at her waist, sealing the deal on her bodyguard disposition and locking me in there with them. The paranoia tells me I can take her if it comes to it, between Charon and my weapon. 

Then I remember I can just log off if worse comes to worse. Off instinct my mind has started to wander to violence first and foremost — and I think about what Eunica said earlier. Stopping evil, not perpetuating it. 

“...Cos? You listening, man?” 

Mirrorshades has been talking at me for the past several seconds, and that check-up pulls me back to the conversation. “Yeah, yeah, sorry. Felt a little, uh—… nauseous…” 

He scrunches his nose up and furrows his brow, little fur caterpillars over discs of chrome. “How long have you been jacked in, man? Christ. Get some fuckin’ sleep or something whenever we’re done here.” 

I stare at him for a second, then look back to Mohawk, who is stalwart as ever. “...you got it. Sorry, been on here a lot lately and it’s starting to fry my brain…”

That part isn’t a lie, at least. 

The man scoffs and flashes those shiny teeth of his again, and his tongue lolls out to glide against their outer surface. “Yeah, I heard, man. You’re makin’ so many waves fuckin’ around on here that even Kuzonoha is startin’ to poke around these parts. You know how far shit’s gotta travel to make it all the way to Tsukudo…? What the fuck’re you doin’ out here, man?” 

I have no clue who Kuzonoha is. My jaw hangs open and my eyes widen a bit as I struggle to come up with something to pad out the conversation with, but the words don’t come. “K—...Kuzonoha?” is all I can manage. 

That seems to satisfy Mirrorshades enough, and he raises a hand emphatically. “Yeah, no _shit!_ Apparently they’ve got sleuths comin’ out all the way to Amami just so they can get a lead on an Uplink to jack in and find shit out. Can’t get much of those in Japan, so they’re trying to use the old Paradigm tech, or so I heard. You ain’t the only one on this case, man.” 

I just keep staring. “...so the impact—… of all of this, I mean. It’s… it’s reaching a lot farther than we thought it would, right?” 

Mirrorshades nods his head, but this time I hear Mohawk’s voice behind me. “Yeah, after you promised this was gonna be a one-and-done job. What gives, Cosmas? What the fuck have you been doing that’s so fuckin’ important you need to raise so much hell on the Net?” 

To be honest, I’ve never really considered much of the world outside of my little bubbles. My hometown was the only bubble for the first eighteen or so years, and for the past five of living in the capital city that place has been my bubble. Then came going online, and jacking in, and the Chrysalis became my bubble, and being offline was outside of it…

I shake my head and raise my shoulders up a bit, then divert my eyes downwards to come up with a lie. “...can’t talk about it right now,” I mumble with half-enunciated vowels, then look back past Mirrorshades as I speak up with a more directed volume. “How much do they know? What can they trace back to me, and—… how…?” 

The two scoff in unison, but Mohawk beats him to the punch. “Only what you’ve been plastering your handle all over for the past seven months, dumbass. If you’re so incognito about trying to find the fuckin’ girl, why are you so prideful about everybody knowing it’s you? I swear to _god_ you’ve lost your touch ever since—….”

“Easy, Vi, easy,” Mirrorshades coos as he raises a gloved hand to Mohawk’s direction. “Cos’ has been workin’ overtime lately. All the stress is probably gettin’ to him.” He can say that again. Mohawk scowls and leans back against the door, arms crossed. “Shouldn’t be weighin’ us down with his shit then,” she sternly comments. 

Mirrorshades rolls his neck to one side, and a series of cracks bounce off metallic walls. In the split second he distracts himself, a thousand realizations wash over me at once. _I don’t have answers for them. They’re gonna find me out. I’ve been faking it the entire time. Cosmas has been at this for longer than we know. He’s looking for somebody. A lost girl. Or maybe not lost. I don’t know._

“She’s right, though. You ain’t been the same since Saturday, man, you all right?” 

“Fine,” I insist. I feel nauseous, and my eyes are scanning over the room to search for some sort of distraction or easy way out. It’s only now that I realize I haven’t actually bothered to take in the room until now, having been preoccupied with the social pressure. It’s small, claustrophobic — nowhere to sit, so I can’t help but question what the utility in this room is. Dull orange light bathes us from an intangible glow in one of the corners, and thin black growths of steel spread like a fungus from one wall to another just above our heads. It’s like pipelines, or a sideways ladder. 

The pressure is starting to build up in my chest; Charon rumbling and thumping against the inside of my ribcage. Maybe it’s just my heartbeat. I can’t tell.

“You don’t seem like it. Even changin’ your looks on here so you look like a teenage girl or somethin’.” 

He might as well have detonated a bomb inside my skull. It’s a hook digging into my back and curling around my spine, then pulling away to separate my vertebrae from my skin. I bare my teeth and wince as I take a step backwards so my back hits the wall. Gotta leave. Gotta leave, gotta leave, gotta leave…

“The fuck? You good, Cos’?” 

I realize I’ve been mumbling under my breath, not just thinking like I said I was. I can’t tell who asked the question — no voices, only words. I place a foot against the floor and push back, as if I’m attempting to meld and become one with the wall, trying to reconstruct my data so that I’m static and unseen. 

“Yo, what the he—…”

I’m enveloped in a dull glow, and shattered pieces of code and script hover into the corners of my peripheral vision. The wall behind me gives, and I fall backwards into the nothingness it’s left. Mirrorshades begins to step forward and grab at me, but I’m already gone. The hole in the code closes, and I’m floating through an expanse of raw data. I can’t make out the shape of my own avatar through the haze, or much of anything corporeal at all. My consciousness is drifting emptily through the void, denied agency or identity and made to blend in with the information transmitted across the Net at breakneck speeds every second. 

It’s comforting, in its own way. 

The peculiar bliss is ephemeral. In the distance I can make out the world of the Chrysalis re-emerging in a corporeal plane, and the code opening back up to spit me out. I land on my back and the wind is expelled from my lungs, which only intensifies the difficulty I have gaining my bearings and discerning where I’m at. My eyes are glued to tesseracts within the metal textures of a cold Chrysalis ceiling, and the hard throb of the “music” is still vibrating my insides from the outside. I guess I’m still inside the club. 

How the hell did I get here? Was I so freaked out that I tampered with the very code of the Chrysalis itself? 

I turn to one side and let an arm graze against the wall — I’ve been slouched in the elbow between floor and wall since I landed, and my body is positioned at an irregular angle. I tentatively place a hand on the floor and begin to push myself up. 

“Hey, Crow…!” 

Ace’s voice rises above the pulses of the club and the murmurs of the groups around us — people are staring at her, and at me by proxy, as she pushes through and calls my name. “Crow! Crow… y’know, I’m getting _really_ used to seeing you on the ground… what’re you doing down there?” 

I scoff a little as I sit up. “It was an accident this time.” 

She shakes her head and sticks her hand right in front of my face again. The tips of her fingers are barely an inch from my nose. This time I reach out to take it, and she pulls me back to my feet effortlessly. I can see the wiry muscle tensing through the taut fabric of her top. “What happened? Don’t tell me you already got yourself into trouble…” She’s half-annoyed and half-concerned, like a big sister scolding a little sibling. 

“Nope,” I say as I shake my head. “...well, kinda. A couple of, uh… couple of people mistook me for Cosmas, and I kinda went along with it. I think I glitched through the Chrysalis somehow and ended up here.” I leave out the bit about panicking.

“...seriously? They _bought_ it? You don’t look or act anything like he does…” She doesn’t so much as allude to the glitch in the system, her mind already leaping over it and straight to what she’s interested in.

“Guess they assumed it was a disguise or something, I don’t know… whatever it was I learned a little bit.” I look over my shoulder — I don’t see either of Cosmas’s affiliates in the crowd, but they’d also blend in pretty well if they decided to pop up. 

“What’s up?” Ace asks as she places two hands on her hips and twists her head to one side. The toe of her sneaker begins to tap and bounce against the metal flooring, and her entire body shifts and moves in tandem.

Her nerves are contagious. 

I shift my weight in an attempt to work off some of the anxiety she’s gifted me. “...well, what we’ve been up to—… or, maybe Cosmas is up to the same thing… word is traveling about it.” I grip one of my wrists and squeeze, my eyes tracing the intricately layered ridges in the ceiling. “...he’s got friends, apparently, and Cosmas has… been doing something for a long time. Long enough for his friends to ask what’s up. He’s got somebody called Kuzonoha on his trail, all the way out in Japan…”

“ _Japan!?_ I didn’t even know they use the Chrysalis over there, that’s so cool…” Ace’s eyes are like a bug’s, and her arms wiggle with every word. 

I shake my head. “Well… apparently not. Apparently they have to go to… some city, I don’t remember, but it’s not easy where they are…” I blink hard and then level my eyes to look past Ace. “Do you know anything about… anything called Kuzonoha?” 

“Nuh-uh.” Ace shakes her head and the jagged layers of bright scarlet go winding with her. Kind of entrancing to watch. 

My arms cross. “Figured. Uhh—… basically all I know is whatever Cosmas has been doing, he’s been at it for a while and has a reputation for it. Something about a girl, too, but—…”

“Of **course** it’s a girl, dude! Did you see how he treated me?” Ace waves her arms, which come dangerously close to clipping the shoulder of a passerby. “Whoops, sorry…” 

I wince a little at the look the guy passing her gives, then look back at her and pull my hat down. “Well… no, because I blinked out right after he started talking to you…” 

“...oh, right. Well, whatever, it makes sense is what I’m saying. So that’s useful, right?” She flashes a thumb and a wide smile. I shrug. 

“Guess so, yeah—… uh. Did you find anything?” 

Ace’s eyes light up, and she hops on her heels. “Oh! Yeah, yeah, yeah, I found a guy who knows him! I was lookin’ for you because I didn’t want to talk to him and learn anything important without you being there too.” 

I raise my brow a bit. “Really?” 

“Yeah, ‘course.” She says it like it was a dumb question, and maybe it was. It’s more consideration than I afforded her, and the guilt crawls up my back like a spider. I pull my hat down a little more. 

“Well, show me where he’s at.” 

“‘Kay! C’mon, before we lose him.”

* * *

The guy Ace leads me too looks way too normal to be on the Chrysalis, but I guess normality is an ideal in and of itself. If he’s anything like me, then being able to play pretend and be a regular guy is something he dreams about every day of his life.

I’m probably making too many assumptions, though — it’s just the immediate impression I get, presumptuous by how seamlessly he seems to blend in with the rest of the world, or… how he _would_ if we were offline.

Thinking too much, again.

He’s a really tall Japanese guy, taller than Ace and I both, and he looks like he presents a little older than we do too. An unkempt, scraggly black beard matches long hair that he’s got tied in a half-hearted bun in the back of his head, locks that broke free falling loosely over his shoulders and around his neck. Said neck is protected by a bright teal turtleneck, layered over with a dark green peacoat that he keeps open and falls down below his waist. His khakis match his jacket, and the only real break in the green-blue color scheme are his sneakers: bright, bright white. He’s holding a long polymer case of some sort in one hand by a handle and the other hand is stuffed into the pocket of his coat.

“Yeah, I know Cos’,” he says with a laziness and slur in his voice that sounds as if he’s just woken out of bed. I can’t place his accent — California, maybe…? Not familiar with geography that far from home…

“We’re pretty tight. As tight as two people can be on here, I guess.”

Ace asked some sort of question beforehand, but I was too busy psyching out over his appearance to think about it or catch what she asked. I rub my eyes and pretend that I’ve been paying attention the entire time, and my focus bounces back and forth between the new guy and Ace.

“Weeeee-eeeell,” Ace begins as she rocks back on her heels and interlocks her fingers behind her back, like she’s trying to be as girlish as possible. The guy gives her an odd look, furrowing his brow and tilting his head back like he’s mimicking her.

Ace doesn’t notice, and if she does she’s not deterred by his skepticism. “See, we’ve been… _looking_ for him, y’know? We’ve got some questions, and we’re worried, and…”

“Is he not answering his emails or anything?” the guy interjects, a thumb pressing hard against the handle of his case. I think it might be for a guitar or something. Ace shakes her head fervently, and I get caught up in the spastic twitching of her hair again.

“Nuh-uh. That’s why we’re worried, he kinda… ghosted on us, entirely. Last we knew he was coming around here a lot, tried to get us to come here, and…”

“Yeah, he liked it here.” His free hand picks and scratches at his beard, and his spaced-looking brown eyes turn away from us as he recedes into his memory. “He spent a lot of time… talking to people, just asking a lot of questions. He’d get really caught up with one person, and like… stalk them the whole night, kinda. I’m one of the only ones he came around to pretty regularly.” 

The guy cracks a little smile, though it’s slow as molasses in his lazy, deliberate movements. “I think he liked my guitar.” Oh, I was right.

It’s obvious to me that Cosmas was trying to gather information about… _whatever_ it is he’s after. Ace is more preoccupied with the present tense: her eyebrows raise and she drops her jaw, like the guitar case he’s carrying has only just now appeared out of thin air. “Whoa, you can play guitar!?” 

“Yeah.” He barely opens his mouth; it’s more of an affirmative grunt. 

“And it, like… makes sound? Do you need a speaker or anything?” 

He crinkles his brow and shakes his head, slow and side to side. His hair bun bobs in rhythm with it, the kind of steady sway one might expect out of a musician. “Nah, it’s like… I got this programmer dude to make it for me, it just makes noise when I hit the strings without an amp. It’s pretty cool, I play here sometimes…”

“In the club?” I ask, finally speaking. I’m asking out of personal interest too, at this point. The guy’s right; it _is_ pretty cool.

He gives me a somewhat surprised glance, his droopy eyelids opening up like he’s impressed. I guess he expected Ace to do all the talking. “Yeah.” 

“Do the owners let you like, perform?” Ace asks, suddenly enthralled. She’s pretty childlike in how she jumps from one fascination to another. It’s charming, but it makes me worry how committed she’s going to be to investigating the virus in the long term — if we make it that far. 

The guy gives that knitted-brow look again, and releases a “no” that again sounds more like a grunt. “...there aren’t, like, owners. None that I know of, at least…? I just come and play, and people like it. It’s pretty cool…” 

I’m caught up, fascinated, in the idea that he finds an audience on the Chrysalis. I guess virtual spaces are a theoretically infinite audience, with instant and immediate platform: just a matter of securing it. 

_Securing it._ Ace opens her mouth to speak, but I cut her off. 

“Have you heard from Cosmas at all recently? As in, the past day or so…?” Ace makes a frustrated noise, but bottles up her issues with my sudden speaking for later. I don’t look at her, but I can practically feel the pouting and the puff in her cheeks.

“...I haven’t seen him, but I don’t really… check emails or anything,” the guy says before he makes another troubled face. He can’t be older than 25, by the look of him, but the way he carries himself and expresses his emotions is soaked in the malaise of a guy Cosmas’s age. Just… less energetic, less extroverted. “He didn’t mention me at all, did he?” 

“I dunno, what’s your name?” Ace asks. When I look at her she’s back to her usual bubbly expression. 

That arched-brow look again. “My _name_ name?” 

“No, duh, just your screen name.” She’s got an incredulous look on her face, complete with a theatrical roll of the eyes. The guy’s misunderstanding isn’t too far of a stretch, but casually invoking a taboo like that kind of deserves the passive ridicule. I feel the embarrassment wash over me secondhand — for both of them.

If he’s bothered by it, he lets it all wash down his back. If anything, he’s more surprised by the clarification, blinking as if it’s all suddenly snapping together before his eyes. “Oh—… Yeah. Dusty’s my SN,” he comments. 

I shake my head. “Not that I can remember. You?” I look at Ace, who just shrugs. “I don’t remember what I ate for breakfast this morning…” 

Dusty pops his menu to life and reaches out for it tentatively. “Is everything good with Cos’...?” He glances at Ace to the side of his menu, then back as he hovers a finger over his inbox. Poke. “I got an email from him yesterday that I didn’t really check…” 

Time slows down. In my peripheral vision I watch Ace slowly sober to the realization herself, friendly expression morphing to wide eyes and a gaping jaw. His finger’s already twitching towards the subject-free email, so there’s no way we can stop him. My eyes flicker to the wall behind her, and in front of me, and I move without thinking: both hands on her shoulders to shove her back, taking myself with her as we begin tumbling backwards. 

“What the fu—…” I can't tell whose voice it is. The sensory simulation fails as the virus overtakes everything around us.

I don’t see Dusty open the email, but I can _feel_ it. The programmed reality begins to crumble apart and fall to glitches, pixelating and fragmenting in shards of corrupted data. My limbs against Ace’s torso begin to be trailed by anaglyphic doubles, and soon the bright colors of her shirt begin to meld together. The walls, torn by corruption as their programming is ripped to shreds and pieced back together by the virus’s whims, close around us, isolating Dusty entirely and threatening to crush us to death as they press in with erratic, twitching movements. No smooth motion, just appearing as if skipping an animation frame. 

I press Ace’s back against the wall and shove as hard as I can. The code opens up and swallows her whole, sending her into the abyss — and I follow right after, somersaulting into nothingness as I lose all corporeal form and once again become data. 

Through cascading layers and over the mainframe my Uplink is connected to, our forms as one in the lightning fast undertow of information and code we’ve become one with. I don’t know where I end and she begins, barely lucid enough to have a solid sense of solitary self. Faint images, ideas, knowledge I can’t comprehend but intuitively understand… and then it opens up, individual agency granted to us once more as it spits us out.


	8. vi: seen

Ace lands first, and I come spiraling out right on top of her. “Ough…!” The sharp, exasperated noise comes with her attempts at doubling over beneath me, but the weight of my avatar keeps her own one from moving too much. I guess I’m heavier than I thought. 

I cough and plant both hands beside her legs on the ground before rolling over onto my back and sitting up. “Sorry about that.” 

“What the _hell_ did you do…?” she asks as she holds her gut, legs curled up against her chest. 

“...I think it’s just… something I can do. Phasing through the code, remember?” I shut my eyes, and a pulsing sensation lights my fingers up in a short burst. Charon is laughing at me. 

“...Charon talked to me the first time I did it—… uh. Talked. You know what I mean, right?” I don’t wait for an answer. “...maybe that’s something special it can do.” 

“You can _teleport!?_ ” I get the impression I knocked all the pep and excitement out of her, and the guilt pricks my head like needles in my hair follicles. 

“I guess so… you okay?” 

Ace coughs and nods before sitting up. “Yeah… yeah.. ugh. where are we? That, uh… what was his name? Dustin?” 

“Dusty.” 

“Yeah, him. He opened the email, right?” 

“Had to have,” I muse with a thumb beneath my lip. “...I don’t know where we are, though. I didn’t try and go to a particular place, just… away from where the danger was. We were gonna get crushed by the data being re-written if we didn’t.” 

She plants both forearms over her knees and slouches, eyes slowly meandering over the large, empty room we find ourselves in. It’s some pale imitation of a rotunda, with pastiches of concrete and wood making up the curved walls. We’re sitting on blank, black tiles that are caked with grime and decay — it all looks like it hasn’t been tended to in years and just left to rot. 

“Like yours,” I absently mutter under my breath. 

“Huh…?” Her voice echoes and bounces off the walls. 

“It’s—… kind of like how your virus was. The rotting building.” 

“There was a building?” Ace’s inflection pitches up in dull surprise.

I look at her for a second and nod as I speak. “Yeah. A hospital, or—… at least, something kind of like one.”

Ace doesn’t verbally reply, and I can’t really see her facial expression in the low light. It gets under my skin. After a while she just says “Gotcha,” and pushes herself up. “C’mon, let’s try and find him. You think the others in the club are okay…?” 

I didn’t even think of that, and I feel that anxiety grip my spine again. “...God. I don’t know, I hope so. If they managed to get out before it got corrupted, then probably. They should be able to log off, right?” 

“Yeah, ‘cuz it only keeps you from logging out if you’re infected. At least—… I think so.” I hear footsteps and echoing around us, quickly realizing it’s just Ace twisting and turning as she re-orients herself. It makes me realize I’m still sitting, and so I bring myself to my feet. 

“Do you… see a door or anything?” she asks — unusually serious, unusually worried. Her confidence isn’t as opaque as it usually is, voice unsteady and every word that comes with it as deliberate as can be.

I look around. The walls are mostly smooth, the only indents or pauses in their surface being the places where the concrete gives way to wood and unsightly cracks in the foundation. “...no. Just a bunch of holes, but too small to climb through.” 

Ace squints and walks towards the wall to survey it, pulling up her menu to illuminate the wall in its faint glow. After preening for a moment she haphazardly sticks her hand through one, then pulls it out and peeks through. “Looks like there’s somethin’ past this wall.” 

“So there has to be a way in there, right?” 

“I mean, yeah, but… lemme…” She places both sets of her fingers on either side of the hole and grunts in exertion as she struggles to pull it apart. 

I pull my hat down. “...I don’t think it’s going to—“

“Hold on, hold on,” she says as she releases and places both hands on her hips. “Just… gimme a minute. Samson’s tellin’ me something.” 

I squint over at her. “What’s it saying?” 

“Dunno.” Her head tilts. “It’s not, like, words or anything. Just feel it. Y’know?” 

The tension in my body and the intuition that comes with, and the natural direction that Charon provides. “...yeah. Keep trying.” 

My encouragement makes the biggest smirk appear on her face, and she reaches out to grab the hole again. She squats down and pushes back with her legs, and after a few seconds’ worth of effort… something changes.

A dull blue glow circles her feet and crawls up her body until it overtakes every inch of her avatar. Before long, her form flickers in and out of existence--the dark brown hues of her skin flit between neon blues and dark greens until they give way to white noise. The pattern repeats until a final burst of haze puts her back in one piece, though that blue pixelated aura still surrounds her. All the while, the muscles in her legs and arms grow tauter and more defined under her flesh, bulging out as they swell with effort.

The silence of the room erupts into a thundering grind as the concrete gives out to her strength, pummeled to pieces and crumbling at her feet. Wood splinters and hangs uselessly around what it once supported, acting as a jagged, toothy frame to our new entrance. 

Ace stands upright and stares down at her hands, the glow dissipating into nothing. “...Whoa.” 

“...I guess it makes sense you get to do something special too, huh?” I look away from her and crouch down to look into the new room, then crawl my way in. “I probably could have tried to warp us through the wall, but…” 

“I know, I know, but…” I can’t see Ace, but I can feel the smile on her face. Her voice is drenched in golden pride. “I wanted to do it myself, you know?”

* * *

The other side wears its rot more pridefully than the rotunda; or maybe it’s just easier to spot on account of how much more cramped it is. We transition from wide-open spaces to closed-in, claustrophobic interiors — rotten, splintered desks and chairs are scattered about in the visage of a tornado’s aftermath, and what little structure is visible on the divider is littered with holes and broken-off chunks. I push myself up to my feet and squint, struggling to make everything out… only for Ace to spell it out for me. 

“Some kinda office…?” Her voice’s pitch tilts upwards, as if uncertain or waiting for an affirmation. When I look at her she’s staring at me, and I sigh through my nose. “Yeah, yeah—… looks like it, anyways. If this is—… if this is actually the inside of his head, then what does an office have to do with it…?” 

“Maybe he hates his job.” 

I scoff a little. “...who doesn’t?” 

“I dunno. I don’t have a job.” 

I arch a brow and turn my head look at Ace as I clamber over the divider. “Really?” 

“Nuh-uh, just sports stuff.” Ace is peering through a nearby doorway. Judging from how she’s squinting it looks like she can’t see a damn thing. 

“No shit…? How old are you, anyways…?” I look away and recenter my vision on the cupboard in front of me. Office mailboxes, nameplates pulled off and long gone are stacked on top of it, and I run my fingers across every one’s interior in search of something. So far, just silt. 

“Hey…! You can’t just _ask_ stuff like that… I’m an adult, okay? Just… a unique one.” 

“...yeah, that’s accurate,” I mumble as my fingers clasp paper. I grab it with the pads of my index and thumb and pull it out daintily — somehow it’s in one piece, dirty and crumpled as it is. 

“How would you like it if I asked personal stuff about you, huh? Like your age, or where you live, or…” Her voice is getting closer, coupled with stomping footsteps.

“You did, before, remember? About—… about my virus. And I didn’t tell you either. For the record… I’m twenty-three. Look—… I found something…” I hold up the piece of paper. 

“Wait, you’d just tell me that…?” She’s not focusing on what matters, and it ticks me off a little. 

“What’re you going to do with my age…? Even if it was anything bad—… well, you wouldn’t mess with me, would you…?” I look at her from under my hat — nervous. I think I got to her, and the guilt dredges you in my chest again. “Sorry. Come on, let’s see if it’s…” 

“It’s fine, I just didn’t expect that from you!” That big smile of hers again as she peers over my shoulder, and I hold it up so that we can both look at it.

The letters stamped right across the top read “END-OF-YEAR REPORT”, and the spreadsheet below lists off several of the different subjects you’d expect to take in primary or secondary school: math, history, music, English, science… it’s a pretty average report card from what I can tell, with the even smattering of grades to match all printed in sterile, beady font. 

“It’s a school,” Ace quips. 

“Yeah… kind of explains the rotunda,” I state, only for Ace to give me another weird look. 

“Huh?” 

“The first room, the big round one. Schools tend to have those as an entrance area, at least—… where I’m fr—“

“Wait,” Ace says. Her tone quivers a bit with unease. “It just changed.” 

“What…?” 

“The report card — that one, the math one. It was a B, now it’s an F…” 

Sure enough, when I look there’s a big, fat F scratched in with red ink over the original grade. As I look up to the history one, it gets scratched out with an F too. Then English, then science, and then finally music. 

Dusty’s voice forces its way into my mind, parting the hemispheres of my brain to make room for itself. _”Failure,”_ it rings out in that familiar monotone. “ _Failure, failure, failure… I’m just a failure. Nothing more…”_

With teeth bared I stuff my fingers underneath my hat to grab my head, and I turn to look at Ace. She’s grabbing her own temples with both hands. “You heard it too, right…?” 

“...didn’t hear, more… forced to think it. It was like this with you, too…” The words don’t come out the way I want them to. As usual.

Ace’s fingers squeeze and pull at her own hair a little. Her teeth grit and grind through her cheeks as she bites down and leaves little imprints and indentations in the surface of her skin. Something I said, or the thought of having feelings forced into her mind… it’s getting to her, and her cheer has started to smolder. Ace drops her hands to her side and looks back down the hallway. “Shadows should be around here, right?” 

I let go of the piece of paper. “That’s how it was last time — after your, um... Your thoughts.” 

She turns her back on me and lets her fists curl up, then snaps her knuckles on each finger of her right hand with her thumb. Her grip could probably kill a man. “Let’s go, then…” 

“Hey,” my voice calls out without me thinking about it. The words come without my mind being cognizant of the sentiment behind them — it’s on impulse, or instinct. “You’re… you’re a lot stronger than I am, you know. Being able to, um—… reach out for what it is you want even when it’s hard, that’s—… that’s something I can’t do.” 

I think I probably said something wrong. Ace doesn’t reply for a good ten or fifteen seconds. When she looks at me, though, she’s got that smile on her face — the same one from yesterday. Gentle and serene, with a glimmer behind her eye that burns brighter than anything else about her.

“Thanks, man… I try, y’know? I really do…”

* * *

The hallway is as rotten and mistreated as anything else so far, but with much less of note. A dead end on one side and a door on the other, but when we peek in there doesn’t appear to be anything but yet another door. I look back at Ace and she shrugs before marching right on in — and we’re both burdened with Dusty’s voice in our heads again. The first syllables are a blade between my brain’s hemispheres, and for a few moments it’s as if my vision cuts out entirely.

_”If I fail, I get punished. If I get punished, I get afraid. But if I’m afraid, I’m nervous, and I’m nervous so I mess up and I fail. Where does it end? Where did it begin? What did I do to deserve it — where did I fail first?”_

I slump against the doorframe and Ace leans to support herself with her hands on her kneecaps. I look up to watch the room as the darkness congeals in the corners, puddles of viscous muck materializing and giving birth to small, humanoid figures. They face the corners, hiding their faces and standing motionless. 

I offset my jaw and palm the wall to shove off of it, stumbling into the room. If intuition is right, then the kids will only give birth to Shadows. Ace tries to push forward a little more, her entire body trembling as she grinds her teeth. She has a hand outstretched.

_”If nobody sees how I fail at everything I do, then… it’ll be like I don’t fail at all. Right…?_ There’s a sort of resonant hope in his voice, but it’s rotten and corrupted like the mold on the walls. Beaten in by desperation, not born of perseverance. “ _If I just pretend I know what I’m doing, then…_

“Ace, wait,” I groan as the voice trails off and the stabbing pain in my skull slowly subsides. “If you touch one, it’s gonna—…” 

Either she didn’t hear me or she’s far too stubborn to listen. Her fingers sink into a tiny shoulder, then are absorbed by the black mass. The kid looks back at her, revealing its masked face: contorted into anguish and painted a striking orange, differing from the cold blues and bright golds we’ve seen before. 

I maintain contact long enough to make out the numeral etched into its forehead: _XIX._

“What the f—!?” Ace doesn’t get a chance to curse, as the kid’s hand twists backwards at the elbow like a hinge and strikes her right across the face with claws fingers. The arm extends and stretches as it does so, then snaps back like a rubber band. 

Ace crumples backwards, covering her face and falling onto her back… right in front of one of the kid Shadows that stares down at her. I look at the one that knocked her down and snarl, fury bubbling in my chest. It’s a different kind of anger than the instinctual desire to survive when I’ve been fighting by myself. Now it almost feels personal, like I need revenge. 

I show my teeth like a feral animal and push one foot back onto the ground, then swing my other leg around to slam my boot right in the center of its little chest. The Shadow is shoved back by the force and falls onto the ground, motionless. I watch it for a second and fight off the instinct to deliver a killing blow — there’s three more, each of them closing in. 

_”Smash ‘em,”_ Ace shouts from behind me — and I feel the static in the air and see the blue glow off the walls. I jerk my head back to watch; Ace is still lying on her back, but the Shadow is nowhere to be found. When she sits up there’s deep red, matching her hair, streaking her face and blinding one eye. She keeps it shut, the opposite eye wide to contrast red against white. 

She’s fine. I look back at the Shadow closest to me and extend my left hand. The hilt of my bayonet phases into my palm, and I squeeze it tight as the Shadow lunges at me with that same elongated limb as its friend. I hop just out of its range, close enough to feel wind moving against my cheek and through my hair, and raise my blade. Spinning my bayonet on the pads of my fingers to hold it underhanded, I grip its hilt tight and thrust into the eye hole of the Shadow's mask. The point of the bayonet impales it right through its head without the slightest resistance

It trembles and squirms, uselessly struggling with its arm still outstretched… then dissipates into a mess of black mass, the Magnetite hitting my feet and absorbing itself into my avatar’s mass. There’s something so sickeningly _satisfying_ in the entire process. 

Two more left. I retract my blade and turn around to look the one behind me square in the face, only to get clawed right across my chest and pushed back. The searing heat of broken flesh gives way to the dull, moist warmth of blood seeping across my now-tattered jacket. A cry escapes my lungs against my will, and I land on my ass only to see the lifeless face of the Shadow towering over me. 

I bring my hand to my face and reach for Charon, bringing its presence to the forefront of my consciousness just in time for it to be useless. The black sheen of a baseball bat cracks the Shadow’s skull right open, and it releases a shrill gurgle before falling back into a pile of muck that becomes one with Ace’s sneakers. 

“Thanks,” I sputter out. She just grunts was she balances the bat against her shoulder and sweeps her fingers across her face, brushing her hair back and wiping the blood from her eye in one motion. Ace glances up at the corner and finally gets to finish her curse from earlier. “...the _fuck?_ ”

I throw my eyes over my shoulder and suck in a breath, a shudder down my spine. I can’t blame her reaction; that first Shadow that I kicked down has crawled up to nest in the corner of the tiny room like a spider, with its limbs bent backwards and extremities turning to shapeless piles of congealed slime that become one with the walls and ceilings it clings to. Its head twists downwards so that it dangles like a tether ball with its neck as a rope. 

Unnerving as it might be, I’m not scared of it. From my knocked-down position I bring my knuckles to my face as a hoarse rasp claws its way out of my chest. My skin tingles and changes resolutions a dozen times a second as Charon’s scythe comes swinging out from the ether, staving the Shadow right in its jaw. The mask cracks down the middle and fractures the agonized face into two tattered halves. 

“Why are you messing around!? Nuke it!” Ace hisses, and I hear her stomp behind me.

“Can’t. Charon’s—… magic, I guess, it has a wide range. Probably blow us up too.” 

I can’t help but think it might have been a worthy sacrifice as the mask falls to the ground and shatters, leaving the Shadow to run down the wall like black pus on rotten skin. I kick away and push myself back on my feet. “Get ready, it’s gonna—…” 

“I _know!_ ” She was ready before I even spoke, bat at the ready for a home run. 

From the pool of darkness comes an avian shape — the black inverts to white, which flanks red wings and a golden plume. Four tail feathers linger behind it as it hovers in place. There’s a hollow fury in its beady eyes. 

Ace doesn’t waste any time. Her muscles tense as she swings right for the demon’s ugly head, putting all her might into it — but it only serves to throw her off-balance and send her toppling back to the ground. The bird dodges to the side and swoops around to my side, where it begins to flap its wings and churn the air. All of the space around me begins to heat up and boil like blood; distinctly familiar, a realization that makes my eyes widen and jaw go slack. 

“Frei…!?” My own trump card, inverted and used against me. I can’t move. Shock manifests as concrete in my boots and lead weights strapped to my wrists. 

The air explodes, and I’m caught in the middle of a nuclear warhead.

* * *

Charon materializes without my command, scythe spun like a staff as it absorbs every ounce of radiation that the demon spits out at me. Suddenly the ache in my chest dissipates entirely, and as I touch it I don’t feel any gash, or see any blood on my fingers. I look up at Charon’s face and witness the most subtle curve of a smile on black lips before it disappears again. 

It saved me — protected me, turned an attack into my saving grace. Why didn’t it do that before…? 

It’s better to not worry about it. I push my foot back again and swing another leg towards my enemy, heel cracking against its rib cage. It squawks in agony and falls to the ground, and I hop forward to plant my sole on its neck and pin it into place. The grip of my blade is twisted so it’s pointed downwards, and I bring it down right over its heart. Another agonizingly high screech before it melts away into darkness beneath me, Magnetite pooling and joining with my avatar’s code yet again. 

Something bubbles in my chest. Twisted pride, the angry joy that comes with victory. It’s only enough to last a few moments before I remember Ace — did Samson absorb the attack too…? When I go looking for her she’s still out on the ground, facing away. She’s still here, so she’s not dead, but… 

I take a knee and roll her onto her back. Her eyes are shut. “Ace.” I shake her, and her bloodied head bobs up and down against the floorboards. “Ace, wake up, can you hear me…? Are you okay!? Come on…” 

Her neutral expression is corrupted into an annoyed scowl, and her forearm smacks her torso out of my grip. “Personal space,” she parrots. “I’m fine, just… hurts. Did it use your own magic against you?” 

“I don’t know. The first ones I fought—… they used something similar, just with wind. Maybe the Shadows can do it too, the same as our Personas…” 

Ace groans and opens her eyes, reluctant. “Can you heal me? I’m not dead, but it feels like all my muscles are on fire. Like a good workout.” 

“Something tells me you’re familiar with that, so it shouldn’t be a problem.” I give her a conceited look.

My sardonic remarks evidently just offend her, as she furrows her brow and pouts up at me. “Shut up and put me back together before I log off…” 

Charon makes quick work of her wounds, and though she has to struggle for a second to do it, Ace stands back up. I look behind her, and trace the outline of a gaping hole in the wall. “Think that Frei made that? It wasn’t there before.” 

“What? Fries?” 

“Frei. The explosion magic Charon uses, and—… and that Shadow too, apparently.”

“Oh, I dunno, I wasn’t paying attention.” Ace scratches the back of her neck with the smooth hilt of her baseball bat, then tucks either end under a wrist and stretches her shoulders. She never really stays still. Her spine curves forward to stretch that out too, and I can make out the indentations of her vertebrae making dark ripples in her skin. Her tongue makes its home in her cheek. “You wanna check it out?” 

“Might as well.” I carefully step over the broken pieces of wood-and-concrete walls and look around what’s waiting for us. Another long hallway, doors on either end. 

For a second I think it’s another hospital, until Ace snaps in with a correction before I ever speak my mind. “Gotta be a school. The one I went to looked a lot like this, ‘cept not rotting or anything.” 

“Mine used pods,” I absentmindedly reply before beginning to walk forward. My boots thump against the tile flooring and create resonant echoes against the walls, slow and deliberate. Ace’s footsteps are quick and light, like she prepares to break out into a jog any minute. 

“Should we check out the classrooms?” 

“I don’t know, whenever I would peek into the hospital rooms in your thing it just meant more Shadows…” 

Ace doesn’t reply for a long time. It’s a good half a minute before she speaks up: “...yeah, if we hear Dusty’s thoughts again… I don’t wanna invade his privacy like that.” 

“Yeah…?” I’m almost surprised she isn’t nosy, but then I remember how she felt about me staring into whatever it is she has going on. I don’t want her to look into my business, either. “...that’s… probably, uh, for the better…” 

“It’s not like it’s important, is it?” There’s an undercurrent of worry and hesitance in her voice. 

“Important to what?” 

“To getting him outta here. What if we can’t kill the Shadows without getting ‘em all outta here?” 

“Well, I didn’t see all of yours either. I just, uh—… it went away when we killed the big one, right?” At least, that’s what I presumed. 

“Guess there’s only one way to really find out,” Ace says, then stops and frowns. “Do you hear something?” 

I stop and try to focus, but my ears are ringing — probably the explosion. “I—...I can’t really hear anything quieter than our footsteps or voices, uhhh—… the spell earlier. I’m surprised you can hear at all.” 

Ace shrugs, having not stopped when I did. “Maybe your magic healed it. I dunno, I just—… I think I can hear a guitar from the end of the hallway.” 

I perk up and begin to follow. “Seriously? Do you think it’s him? ...why would he be play—“

Ace cuts me off, now in a full-on sprint. “Either it’s him or it’s a Shadow that needs to get clobbered, so let’s go…!”

* * *

The hallway goes on for what seems like miles, but in time I can hear the flurry of steady, sweeping notes begin to echo from the end of it. They’re precise and clear but flow into one another like how raindrops become a torrent. Each meter brings a steady decline in the rhyme-and-reason of the facade this place keeps: the square shape of the hallway clusters and bottlenecks at one end, only to grow wider right at the mouth of it. The tiles’ shapes lose their corners or the order in their shapes, long and distended ones meeting with others an inch long. They rise and fall under our feet, and I can feel myself stumbling every few steps. 

At the end there’s an opening barely as tall as we are, and a sick yellow light emanating through it. The music is clear as it comes, louder and louder until Ace beats me there and shoves her way past the entrance. Her silhouette stops in its tracks as the light envelopes it, assertive posture growing slack and bewildered. I follow soon after, and it quickly becomes apparent why Ace was floored by what she saw.

If nothing else, the pretense of imitating a school is at least somewhat consistent: the chamber resembles an auditorium that you’d see on the campus of a high school or college, complete with rows of seats and seated bodies staring up at the “stage.” The seats grow more and more angled backwards until they rise at a 90 degree angle and track up the sides of the stage, those seated inside them utterly unaffected by gravity or the bizarre architecture of it all. The stage has to rest twenty or thirty feet up in the air, black curtains of stamped steel suspended in front of a bright red stairway whose crimson color parts the sea between the two halves. 

Standing in front of that stairway is Dusty, his own deep red guitar strapped to his shoulder as he plays and plays, a captive to his audience. Terror and tension is painted all on his features, furrowed brow caked with sweat as his jaw shakes and trembles. To see him in such a state of distress when he seemed so calm barely an hour ago… 

Everything is still, no sound but the amplified sounds of his instrument bouncing off the malformed walls of the auditorium. 

Then Ace throws a stutter in his rhythm by crying out. 

“Dusty…!” 

The sudden cry makes him jump a little, and a sour note rings out and echoes as he hits the wrong string as a result. His eyes widen and his jaw drops before he begins to mumble under his breath — I can read his lips, even if I can’t hear it word for word. He’s just repeating “no, no, no, no,” over and over. 

A murmur begins in the crowd, before a single, focused voice cries out in a sharp, stabbing tone. “Failed! You failed!” 

It repeats its condemnation over and over again, and with time another voice joins in. Then a third, and a fourth, growing more and more each time it repeats. The volume is overwhelming, yet the voices maintain perfect rhythm. _”Failed, failed, failed, failed, failed!”_

Dusty lets go of his guitar, which dithers into data as his hands reach up to clutch his head. Bared teeth grind and chatter as he cries out something at the crowd, but his words are drowned out by their nonstop jeering.

His fears become reality — and it dawns upon me, slowly, as I watch every single member of the crowd erupt into flame. The heat burns the very space and air around it, digital artifacts appearing as the Chrysalis struggles to make sense of its synthesized reality. 

The virus makes your fears corporeal, as close to _real_ as they can be in the liminality of electronic projections. Powerlessness for Ace, rejection for Dusty — for me, it’s being alone, and in the dark. 

Everything happens all at once, but I perceive each little piece in slow motion, one at a time. Shadows rising from flame, wings spread and claws poised at us. Ace summoning her bat and using her power to concentrate her strength, teeth bared as she decimates her enemies with a single swing. Dusty panicking and running up the stairs behind him, either afraid of the crowd or the flames they’ve become. 

One of the bird-like ones makes a dive right at me, poised like an arrow slicing through the air. As Ace notices her eyes go wide and she opens her mouth to say something, but I’m already moving: down into a crouch as the ground opens beneath me, on instinct. 

My consciousness dives into the abyss of data and fragmented information before I reappear on my feet behind the shadow. “ _Persona…!_ ” I hear my own voice before I think about it. Charon springs forth and digs its scythe into the beast’s back, and I notice my blade is in my hand just in time to realize I’m throwing it with all of my might — torso swinging and feet pivoting to put everything I have into it. As the blade makes contact as the monster breaks out into a piercing shriek, then gurgles and explodes into Magnetite. My weapon hits the wall behind it and fizzles into data, disappearing just after. 

I’ve only just gotten to register the heat — I’m sweating under my hat and jacket, and my hands are trembling from adrenaline. I stare down at the left one where my blade used to be for a second, and I close my mouth after I realize it’s been hanging open. 

“Hey—… Crow!” Ace cries as she grabs me by my shoulder and spins me around. It doesn’t do anything but disorient me. “You okay!? Sorry, there were a ton of them, and I didn’t—“

“I’m fine,” I interject, and I’m not sure if I’m telling the truth. “...kind of, um. Acted on autopilot. Fighting started, and it just became easy, and… felt like it wasn’t me.” 

Ace nods curtly as she speaks, turning her head stare nervously at the pillar of flames covering the stage. “You… you really get into it, man, it’s kinda…” She sighs. “Don’t worry about it. It was kinda smart teleporting to dodge, just…” Her lips purse. “What are we gonna do about Dusty? He can’t log out as long as the virus is doing it’s thing, and if the flames get to him…” 

I feel my jaw tighten. “I’ll… I’ll talk to him.” 

“ _Talk?_ ” She (correctly) talks as if I’m an idiot.

“Yeah, I just…” I reach down to grip my jacket by its bottom hem and pull it up and over my head, then toss it to the ground next to my hat. I just wear a plain black sleeveless shirt with a high collar underneath, so the heat is a lot less unbearable — I’m going to need as much as I can get if I’m going to be walking right into the flames. Even if it’s not _real,_ my brain thinks it is, and passing out from heat stroke or something just means Dusty’ll burn to death.

And me too, I guess. 

“...I know where he’s coming from. You know? About… judgement, and failure, and…” It’s like throwing myself off a cliff. “...trying to express yourself to people who won’t listen, and… shit—… shit like that.” 

It takes Ace a second, but she hesitantly nods. “I don’t know any more than you’re willing to tell me, but if you trust your own judgement, then I’ll… stand by you on that one.” Her eyes depart down, the uncertain look on her face illustrating _exactly_ why I prefer to cover up. I don’t like the sight of my own body any more than she does. 

“Have you always been that, um… skinny?” 

“Yeah.” Skinny’s one word for it. It’s easier to be candid about it when I think about it that way. “I’m not that big of a person at all, just… tall, on here.” I pull my shirt up a little to loosen the fit. 

“Gotcha…” She doesn’t seem convinced, but even Ace gets that we have less time than we do questions. “Just be careful, okay? Do you need me to wait…?” 

“No.” I throw my hair back across my head so it’s out of my face and down my shoulders. “Go… find a way out of here, or just log out and re-log, and make sure nobody else who was in the club got hurt when everything went to Hell.” I peer at her for a second. “If everything’s good, then I guess it wouldn’t hurt, but don’t go throwing yourself in danger or anything. All right?” 

“All right. See you soon,” she says, and cracks a cocky sneer right after. “Promise.” 

It takes me a second but I reach for my head, only to find no hat to hide under, and instead I just awkwardly clutch at nothing. “...Promise, yeah.” 

I turn away and don’t look back, because if I do I might start to have second thoughts. I’ll start to worry for her, or get scared and quit it, or just stop and _think_ too hard like I always do. The Chrysalis opens up before me. I move a heavy boot through the vivisection in the data, only for all the weight to disappear as I float on. When my foot hits solid ground again I’m atop the stage, just where I wanted to be. 

I glance over my shoulder, and Ace isn’t there. The worry grips at the base of my neck and tugs down hard, but I have to ignore it. If I don’t…

It’s hot as hell up here, thick perspiration beading on my head as the humidity and burn of the air coat every inch of my skin, trapping whatever synthesis of heat against me. It’s hard to breathe, and every step is another inch forward towards a stovetop’s burners. 

As I begin to force my way up the stairs my knees and legs feel every pound of my body, and then… I feel weightless, like my nerves have all turned to mush and gravity no longer applies. It occurs to me that the heat, the sweat, even something as simple as gravity are arbitrary and that it’s just stimuli being transmitted to my brain through electrodes attached to my forehead and temples. I think I might have hit the upper limit of what they’re capable of emitting all at once, or all the fire is overloading whatever hardware the Chrysalis is rendered and hosted on, or… _something._

It’s hard to think in a state like this, especially considering that I’m released into completely nulled feelings from complete sensory overload. The heat, the sound of the burning, the smell of hot rust and the bright flickers of the flames were all too much, and now it’s just _nothing._ If I think hard enough — or not at all — I begin to lose the feeling in my limbs, then the ability to move them, then the knowledge that they’re connected at all. I’m floating up the steps, completely disconnected from whatever semblance of a body I have in cyberspace.

It’s kind of nice.

Something blacks and blinks, and a percussive _pop!_ registers right in the center of my brain. I feel my gray matter being moved around as I fall onto one of the steps and slam my elbows down on the top one, then groan. Gravity is back, and so are my nerves. The world around me is in monochrome with flecks of lavender and green creaking across my vision, but the flames burn as brightly as ever.

I force my body up onto the landing and peer up ahead, where a door remains shut. There’s got to be some sort of hardware malfunction going on, whether it’s with my Uplink or serverside wherever the Chrysalis is being run. All of the glitches and the virus’s havoc can’t be easy on the memory, which means I’ve only got a few minutes before _something_ goes wrong again. The heat creeps back up to the forefront of my focus, slowly, and I crawl a few feet on my knees. Every breath is a labored effort, and when it comes out of my lungs it’s in a harsh rasp. Like static inside me, slow-onset electrocution. 

Back on my feet, and trudging towards the door. I force it open and see that bundled-up figure cowering away from the fire, then Dusty’s desperate eyes nervously gawking out from between his fingers. I can barely make the shape of him out — just a white shape amongst grey artifacts. It’s more of an educated guess than anything

I lean forward and support myself by placing my hands on my knees, then purse my lips. “Hey.” It’s hardly a croak and makes my throat hurt, but it’s audible enough. My entire insides feel dry. I’d kill for a drink. 

He hesitates before he shifts in place and lowers his hands slowly. “...hey.” 

“You all right?” My sweat is making my bangs stick to my face. I probably look like a mess. It’s a fair trade for what I know about him, I guess. 

“Uh—…” Dusty finally sits up and pushes himself so is back is fully against the wall. “...uh, no. Not really.” 

I nod and glance around at the fire, teeth sinking into the inside of where my lip and cheek meet. “Can’t blame you. Look, I—“

“How did you guys get in here? Why are you—…”

“It’s—...it’s a long story that I _really_ don’t know if we have the time to go over. I came here because I just—…” I grimace and drop myself to a knee. “I get it, you know?” 

Perplexion crosses Dusty’s sharp features, and I can make out the image of a twisted frown beneath his sweat-soaked beard. “Get _what?_ ” 

“...having trouble, uh. Expressing… what’s inside you. Making people understand. The—… subjective qualities of the heart you put into what you do, and…” There’s a lock over my throat when I try to go further, and my vision sputters in and out of functionality. I don’t even know if I’m speaking or if I just _think_ I am. I guess I’m proving my own point.

Both of my palms cross my knee. “People see what they want to see in what you do, right?” 

Dusty hesitates. “...yeah, it’s—… it’s like I can try so hard on something and put everything I have into it, but they don’t see that. They look at something I’ve been breaking my back to accomplish and only see the flaws in it. When you put your heart and soul into something and it’s still not good enough, then what does it… you know, say about who you are?” 

I shrug. “If I had an answer I’d give you one. It’s something I have issues with myself, so usually I just—… I just don’t.” Static crackles around me, and I look over to my side — nothing. Another glitch. “You’re a lot, uh, more—… you’re better than I am, putting yourself out there with the music and everything. With the music and all.” Hesitation as I place a hand on the ground near myself and settle into a seated position, legs crossed. 

I break a taboo. “You do the music thing offline, too…?” 

Dusty furrows his brow and tilts his head away from me, then slowly nods. “Kinda. It’s, uh, it’s a long story…” 

“Yeah, I get it, don’t worry. I’m, uh…” I stammer, some sort of microcosm of stage fright welling up in my spine. “I’m an artist. I’ve been drawing since—… since I was a little kid, right…? And, um—… I’ve never been happy with myself. Or my art. Neither have other people that have seen it, so… I just keep it to myself now and only really draw for my job. Illustrator, you know…?” I force a scoff at myself, the percussive noise crushed into bits. “It-... it says a ton about people like you and me that we fear judgement but judge ourselves the most harshly.” 

Dusty smiles, though it’s careful and fragile. “Yeah, guess so.” He folds his hands over his knees, and glances over at the flames. “...why’d you come, man…? Aren’t you scared of this?” 

“Oh, I’m scared as hell. I think the Chrysalis is starting to buck under the processing strain or something and I can hardly even see you or hear what we’re saying, but—… you can’t log out, right?” Dusty shakes his head. “Yeah, see…? Doesn’t sit well with me to just let somebody get hurt. I, uh—… and I’ve. I’ve noticed something in the last few days.” 

I shift my weight onto one side and uncurl my legs. Forcing myself to speak is a crowbar between my lungs. Sweat drips down my nose and tickles on the way down.

“...I came here because I was avoiding something, in my real life. Feeling alone. There’s, uh—… there’s a lot to it. I don’t want to get into it. I have, and—… had, I guess, stuff inside me that I didn’t really want to look at and admit. I thought it was just me, because people come on here to socialize and have fun, but I just come to be alone.”

Our eyes meet again, finally. “But ever since all of this started, I see people like you, me, and even Ace—… we’ve all got things that bother us, even if we act happy all the time, or even if we actually _are_ mostly happy. I was ashamed of it, but now… now I don’t feel quite as isolated, even if it’s only through knowing the weight I carry is shared.” 

I don’t really know where I’m going with this, and I stutter for a few seconds. Clumsy. “I don’t know if I feel up to calling anybody a friend — nobody here really knows who I am, even now -- but to have people standing with me, even if it’s just—… in some sort of weird, miserable solidarity… it’s meaningful to me. And I figured that might mean something to you, too.” Assumptive of me. I blink, and my vision lags behind my eyelids.

Dusty doesn’t speak for what feels like a long time, but it could just be a few seconds. The heat makes it hard to tell time. Then, he dips his head down so that it’s level with his knees. “Yeah. Yeah, the art thing—… you get it. I didn’t think anybody else did, or would.”

“I didn’t either. But I met somebody earlier today who’s voiced similar things, so—… it’s not just you and me either. I think everybody’s a little harsh on themselves at times, especially if they put themselves out there.” 

“Seriously? All this from somebody you just met?” 

“Well, maybe it’s kind of weird, but it’s a lot for somebody who didn’t talk to people at all until this week. And everything on here is… inherently performative, or an act of expression. Even the way I look here is because I want to express myself a certain way. If somebody has to go out of their way to talk about something it has to be significant even if it’s a little.” 

“...that’s… really heavy. I just came here because I wanted to play guitar…” 

I shake my head and force myself back onto my feet. “Everybody has their reasons for going online, don’t worry about it.” Slow, careful steps until the toes of my boots are at his ankles, and my hand is extended towards him. “Come on. Let’s get out of here.” 

It takes a second, but he grabs my wrist and hoists himself up. “Will I be able to log out if I get out of here?” 

“I don’t actually know. There’s usually another step in the process, but we’ll see if you manage to skip that one…” 

Apprehensive perplexion is all over his face as I turn around, but I kind of expected that. These aren’t exactly normal circumstances, so any shock just comes with the territory. As I push forward a little more, I catch a shape forming in monochromatic flame. Amorphous, then oval-shaped, and finally the familiar shape of a mask contorted into a scream. My teeth bare, and Charon gurgles inside of me — but then I look over at Dusty, whose eyes are locked straight onto the Shadow as it rises out of the flame. His jaw is dropped, and his brow slowly tenses until there’s a palpable anger in his eyes.

I lurch forward and step back. “You, uh—… you know what comes next, right?”

His menu flickers to life, the text and characters shift around and swap until the shape of another tarot forms — his is simpler, the familiar image of the Sun smiling back at him as he grazes his fingers along the numeral at the bottom. _XIX._

“Yeah,” Dusty says. “I think I do.”

His fingers phase through the card, and his avatar explodes into tiny nodules of compressed information that, when assembled, _should_ roughly project his idealized self into the Chrysalis. I always wonder if when we summon we’re one missed pixel away from disappearing entirely. This time, though, Dusty is lucky: he re-materializes in one piece, arm outstretched and eyes flickered into a radiant hue of gold.

The fire around us blazes up until I swear the intensity is enough to kill us. I yell something, words lost under the pressure and my Uplink’s slow decline, only to watch as the flames seem to reach out and grab two of the Shadows by their throats. They squeal and whimper as if pleading for mercy before disappearing into black muck, only their larger friend behind their remains creeping up the steps. 

Dusty curls two fingers until the pads touch the center of his palms. “C’mon…!” The stretched, sentient flames spiral out and swirl until they form a tall, slender column in between us and the Shadow, then compress before bursting in a wave of heat. It makes me stumble back and fall right back onto my rear, but Dusty remains upright.

The Shadow tumbles down the steps, and the flames from the entirety of the hallway are drawn into the greater spiral in front of us. The column glitches, sputters, shivers and pixelates as it struggles to make itself corporeal. 

“C’mon…! Come _on!_ I can do this… might not be perfect, but I can stand on my own two feet, man…”

Finally, I can make out a shape: bright as anything I’ve ever seen, radiant hues of golden light piercing through the air and bathing the rusted, decrepit interior of the Chrysalis in a vibrant glow. Golden robes cross its masculine figure, arms clutching a distended object roughly in the shape of a musical instrument of some sort, and I can see long, tapered horns emerging from the dark skin of its forehead. Its eyes are the brightest of all, golden as the serene grin that it wears in perpetuum. 

_”I am thou… and thou art I. In the face of failure only comes further proficiency and greater will to press on… Through the darkest despair, the warmth of the Sun is at its most bright. I am RJ, the maestro…”_

“I know!” Dusty growls out. “Just… fight already! _Agilao!_ ” 

RJ smirks, as if it had been waiting for its keeper’s permission. One long, thin arm raises before it strikes the strings of its instrument, and the flames creep back in again — not all around us, but all over the Shadow that blocks the stairs. A bellowing roar escapes it as it struggles to swat out its own flames, only to appear to melt into a pool of black… and emerge in its true form. 

I push myself onto my feet and hold myself up with the wall, shoulder scraping against aged steel. “You good!?” Dusty asks as he looks behind me. I shrug and shake my head. “I don’t know.” 

He exhales and makes a face that looks half-amused, half-exasperated. “Guess it’s my turn to help out. I got your back, just don’t do anything stupid.” 

“Too late,” I grumble as I shove off the wall and behind Dusty, who promptly begins to step down the stairs. “Big guy’s coming, be careful. You don’t want to be caught too close without something to hit it with…” 

“Way ahead of you, man.” His guitar case spawns into the air in his right hand, and he opens it to grab his guitar by the neck and hold it upside down before discarding the case, which disappears in a pulse of green pixels. I raise my brow as my blade appears in my hand, twisted downwards. “You’re kidding me…” 

The Shadow lurches forwards and struggles to keep itself suspended with its two hands, buckled over itself in an abstract that loosely resembles a cowering human. Chills, in spite of the heat, and the sober knowledge that I’m not in much better shape than it is. Dusty isn’t near as merciful. He inverts his guitar and grips it like a sword, then swings it in an upwards diagonal motion to clock the Shadow right in its jaw. It hisses as it’s struck, recoiling back only to turn its head and show off all the cracks and crumbles on its mask. 

I plant a hand on the ground and force myself to stand up, and then will Charon into existence before us. When I summon it, there’s a delay — and its monochromatic figure is inarticulate and splotchy, like it’s only half-loaded. “What the hell…” The fires have gone out and become one with Dusty’s Persona, right? He doesn’t appear to be having any issues with fighting. 

Why is it me…? 

“Careful,” I say as Charon swipes its scythe out and holds it at its side stalwartly. At least it can still fight — still protect me. “If its mask broke, that means it’s gonna…” 

...collapse into darkness and return anew, form growing amorphous until it’s but a puddle on the ground. Instead of a creeping limb coming forth from within, a spark appears in the middle of the slick substance which then ignites it. RJ appears before Dusty and shields him from the flame, just like Charon did with the explosions and me, but they don’t stop. If anything, they intensify and grow stronger, brighter, hotter, more cohesive and with a distinct _shape…_

Wings spread out and a golden crest puffs out behind the Shadow’s distended head. The fire doesn’t disperse, but instead relocates so that they coat the wings of the new bird and blaze brilliantly with every flap of its wings. It lets out a sharp cry, which makes Dusty recoil and cover his ears from the sheer volume. 

“It’s—… it’s a phoenix…?” 

It’s brought company — from the ashes that birthed it come four of the red birds that Ace and I fought before, each of them screeching and scrawing at the foot of the steps. I glance over at Dusty, who stands poised with his guitar erect like an axe. “We’ve got the upper ground, at least—… can’t fit all five of them up a stairwell…” 

“Can’t just aim fire well down a close corridor,” he barks back, breaking his focus for a split second to gawk back at me, and then at Charon. “Nice,” he mumbles, then re-asserts his concentration. “What can yours do?” 

“Uh—…” I close my eyes. _FREILA.EXE. MEDIA.EXE. SLASH.EXE._ “...explosions, healing, and cutting stuff up.” 

“ _Real_ flexible tools we got…” 

“What about you, is it just fire?” 

“Uh—… no, I can do something else, but I dunno what it—“

Two of the birds grow impatient and scream up at us before they begin to flap up the steps, colliding through one another and clipping like their code was trying to overwrite one another. It’s a sort of corrupted set of avian Siamese twins, talons poking out of an eye and wings emerging from bellies. 

Dusty steps back, jumping a little in shock, and brings up his card. “U—uuuhhh…! RJ, Mahama…!” 

RJ arrives on command and strikes its instrument as the birds are halfway up the stairwell, bright light blinding them as it peeks out of the cramped mouth of the passage. The radiance becomes contagious as beams of golden crack out from within the core of the twins, both beaks releasing cries of pain as it bursts from within them. The light cracks out of more and more of the spaces between the bugged Shadows and then consumes them entirely, nothing but ash and dollops of Magnetite flinging themselves to our feet from the inertia. 

“Holy shit,” Dusty says as he looks at me again. 

“Don’t look away, they could try something again…” I creep forward until I’m right by his side, and point down the stairwell with my bayonet. “Look, get the other two little birds. They use the same kind of magic as I do, so they’re strong against it… but I don’t think the phoenix’ll be as strong.” 

“Dude, can you even take it?” Dusty doesn’t sound convinced, and I don’t blame him. I’m not confident in myself here either. 

“We’ll figure out soon.” The Chrysalis opens up beside me and I sidestep into it — code again, disembodied again, weightless as I float through the coordinates of the Net’s inner bowels. I’m dropped on my feet roughly behind the Phoenix, and almost fall off the stage losing my footing: when I make impact my vision cuts out and the sound around me stammers. It feels like my boots have clipped right through the ground, knee-deep I’m nothing — I can’t move them at all. 

Slow panic, like creeping death around my throat. Why am I not working right? Why can’t I function the way I need to?

Everything comes back together — fragments of broken glass in my peripherals that assemble into a fractured, half-realized pastiche of everything that _should_ be. Senses settle into where they should be, and I’m whole again: on my side, wings spread ablaze before me. I can taste the heat and smell the blinding light.

Upright again, and the sensation of wind passing over my leg as I send the sole of my boot into the bird’s spine. There’s an explosion of information beneath my foot as the shape of the bird disappears and then rematerializes an instant later, careening to the ground and sliding against the scorched steel beneath us.

My fingers snap. A voice comes from within my chest — _”Freila!”_ — and everything erupts over the bird, fission burning out my teeth. The impact launches me backwards again. Something in my chest cracks. It hurts to breathe, and I tumble over whatever’s broken every time I roll sideward on the ground.

These are all things I witness, perceive, and understand — but do not commit. They are not extensions of my will, but circumstances that I am a viewer to. A backseat to my own avatar.

Somehow I find the strength to push myself up and support my upper body with my arms, legs still sprawled across the ground. It looks like one of them is bent at an uncomfortable angle, but I don’t really feel anything to speak of. Some sort of emulated adrenaline blocks out the pain, or perhaps a widening of the gap between my consciousness and my brain. There’s not much in the way of sensation at all, really.

Charon comes forth. I can’t tell if it’s acting on instinct or if I summoned it, but its fingers brush through my hair, across my scalp, and the trigger hits my brain instantly that all has been mended. I know, intuitively, that I’m better — I just don’t feel it.

I’m on my feet again. There’s a column of flame coming towards me. The world opens up, and I jump through and rematerialize a few meters to my left. More flames in my peripheral; RJ’s cooking the two smaller birds alive and finishing one off with an overhead axe-swing of his guitar. He’s handling himself well, so it’s just me and the bird.

And Ace, who makes her presence known with her best attempt at a war-cry as Samson’s columns crush the phoenix into the ground. The Shadow cries out, screams, shouts, and then twitches uselessly on the ground.

Eyes hit the ground, searching for her, catching the sight of a muscular brown leg throwing itself over a ledge as she pulls herself up. “Holy _shit_ , Crow, he’s doing it…!” Bounding, running every bit as much as she is jumping and skipping, finger flailing in Dusty’s direction as he hops down the steps, cradling his guitar over his shoulder by its headstock. 

"She's got one too…?" He breaks his focus for a second to stare at Ace, but then spreads his legs out and holds his guitar as if it were a sword— theatrical, overdone, and exactly what I would expect from a performer. "Whatever, dude… c'mon, let's take it down while it's out of commission. All three of us should be enough, right?" 

Ace turns to look at him, then at the bird, and cracks a malicious grin as her baseball bat materializes in her palms. 

"Yeah… c'mon, Crow. Let's go all-out."

I feel my bayonet's grip cutting into my palm as I squeeze hard — then the wind in my hair and flesh giving out under my blade, bones snapping under the impact of blunt instruments. Shrieks and squawks turning to desperate wails before the bird turns back to inky blackness, but we don't give up until it's all said and done, until every bit of pain is paid back, and until there's nothing left around us but charred theater. A glitch, a momentary stammer in the Chrysalis's programming, and then the familiar interior of the club. 

Ace is jumping up and down victoriously. Dusty is sighing in relief and holding his head in his hands, fallen flat on his ass. I struggle to catch my breath, fail, and fall backwards. Everything catches up with me at once. 

The last thing I see before I'm out is the color fading from my vision again and the comforting disarm of pixelated vectors.


End file.
